Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E255: From Broken to Beloved: My Journey Through Foster Care w/Amy Main | Lila Rose Show

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E255: From Broken to Beloved: My Journey Through Foster Care w/Amy Main | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  You had been abused by your dad. You're being abused in this
• 0:02
  first foster care. They adopt your sister, but then
• 0:05
  they say they don't want you. Everybody has something, but
• 0:08
  guess what? There's somebody that's worse
• 0:10
  than mine. The only time that tears came to
• 0:11
  your eye so far in this conversation we were having is
• 0:14
  when you're talking about how you didn't love your husband as
• 0:16
  much as you wish you had. I can't control what happened to
• 0:19
  me as a child, but I absolutely can't now also allow other
• 0:23
  people to be victimized to my own victimhood.
• 0:25
  I think that there's a lot of incentive to have a broken
• 0:28
  system. You're the president of America
• 0:29
  and you're. I fixed the adoption and foster
• 0:31
  care system. What would you do?
• 0:33
  I don't. Think that it's about pumping a
• 0:35
  bunch of money. Into it, I think, is foster care
• 0:37
  worse than not being born? Today on the Lila Roche Show, I
• 0:40
  sit down with Amy Mayne, a mother and advocate and a
• 0:43
  content creator who shares about going through multiple rounds of
• 0:46
  foster care as a child, experiencing abandonment, abuse,
• 0:50
  neglect, and ultimately, eventually, adoption.
• 0:53
  Amy gets raw and honest about how her early years affect her
• 0:56
  to this day, including her marriage and her motherhood.
• 0:59
  But Amy's story is ultimately one of redemption and the power
• 1:02
  of Jesus Christ to transform lives.
• 1:05
  I think this topic is so important, and many of you know
• 1:07
  that I've talked about this topic before, because there is a
• 1:10
  whole advocacy world out there saying that because of horrible
• 1:14
  situations like abuse and neglect and because of the
• 1:17
  struggles of some children in foster care, this is the reason
• 1:20
  why we need abortion on demand. Amy also beautifully responds to
• 1:24
  this narrative, and I think you'll find her story and her
• 1:27
  case deeply compelling. Thank you to everybody who's
• 1:29
  been subscribing to the show. Did you know that over 70% of
• 1:33
  people who listen to this show on YouTube are not yet
• 1:35
  subscribed? You might not even know it yet,
• 1:37
  but make sure that you hit that subscribe button and ring that
• 1:40
  notification bell so you don't miss future episodes.
• 1:42
  Also, if you're listening on podcast app right now, thank
• 1:45
  you. Thank you for helping us rise in
• 1:47
  the ranks. Make sure you're subscribed over
• 1:49
  on podcast app and leave us five stars and write us a review.
• 1:53
  I read every one of them. They are so encouraging.
• 1:56
  I appreciate every single person who takes the time to write
• 1:58
  those reviews and and leave those five stars.
• 2:01
  It helps the show grow. Amy Mayne, welcome to the
• 2:03
  podcast. Thank you.
• 2:05
  So great to meet you finally in person.
• 2:07
  I know well we've met like passing, but it's always like
• 2:10
  the busiest things so. You have to finally sit down and
• 2:13
  have a real conversation. Actual conversation where it's
• 2:15
  not like hi bye. You are.
• 2:17
  You're awesome. I've watched your stuff now for
• 2:20
  I don't know how long. It's been since the beginning.
• 2:23
  I think of you being a creator online and telling your story.
• 2:26
  When I first saw your story, I thought she is, I want her to be
• 2:30
  the poster child for the pro-life movement because she
• 2:34
  has been through all of the all of the struggles and you've
• 2:38
  overcome and you are a beautiful example of of hope.
• 2:44
  I think to now millions of people that are watching your
• 2:47
  content. So thank you for making the time
• 2:48
  to come in. I know it was rough getting in
• 2:50
  here. So thank you for coming out to
• 2:51
  California and I'm very excited for our conversation.
• 2:53
  Yeah. It's definitely worth it.
• 2:54
  I'm happy to be here. Where are you?
• 2:56
  Where were you born? I'm from Arkansas originally and
• 3:02
  I've moved. I I that's pretty much like
• 3:05
  where I grew up and stayed was in Northwest Arkansas.
• 3:08
  And so you and you have an older sibling.
• 3:11
  Well, so I have an older biological sibling, but I'm
• 3:14
  actually one of 1011. So I have one older biological
• 3:20
  sibling and then I have 9 adopted siblings.
• 3:22
  So yeah, all age range from my sister's 30, two, but then my
• 3:29
  youngest sibling is 7, so it's like a pretty big age.
• 3:33
  Yeah. Are they all adopted?
• 3:34
  Yeah, my youngest, well, we're all adopted, and my sister and I
• 3:40
  and my brother are not related to each other.
• 3:44
  But then my youngest sevens, my other young seven siblings are
• 3:48
  all related to each other, but they're not related to us.
• 3:51
  That with the same mom and dad and this is the second family
• 3:54
  that adopted you that you have stayed with.
• 3:57
  Yeah. So if I were, if I say like in
• 3:59
  this my family, it's I'm going to be referring to my parents
• 4:05
  that adopted me as a teenager and everybody with that because
• 4:07
  I'm not actually in contact with anybody else from my life.
• 4:12
  I wouldn't consider them like my family.
• 4:15
  So I wouldn't, I would probably distinguish like my biological
• 4:19
  family or I'll say my old adopted family, which is hard.
• 4:22
  People are always like, that's really a strange thing to say.
• 4:25
  But so my family, yeah, my parents and they adopted us when
• 4:30
  they were like really young too. We always, we lived in, we lived
• 4:34
  in Washington for a while and we went to Idaho.
• 4:36
  And my dad always made sure that I walked on like the complete
• 4:39
  opposite side of my mom because everybody thought we were
• 4:41
  Mormon, like polygamist. And it's like this my this my
• 4:44
  daughter, not my. Wife, he would be like, that's
• 4:46
  my daughter and I'm about to say dad super loud, but yeah, how?
• 4:50
  Old were they when they adopted you?
• 4:51
  My dad was, let's see, my dad's nine years older than me, so he
• 4:55
  would have been like 25. And then my mom, I think was 29.
• 5:00
  And you were adopted at what age this was your?
• 5:02
  I had just turned 15. What inspired a 25 year old and
• 5:08
  a 29 year old couple to adopt A 15 year old girl from foster
• 5:12
  care? And there's, they've always been
• 5:14
  kind of unconventional. Well, and they were told so my
• 5:17
  sister who who I was telling you about like can I get the age
• 5:19
  right? She's a little bit older than me
• 5:22
  and. She's a logical.
• 5:23
  Sister. No I have two technically.
• 5:25
  This is so confusing. So I have an older adopted
• 5:28
  sister too and she was adopted by my parents and she was.
• 5:33
  From foster care as well. Yes, from foster care as well,
• 5:36
  and as a teenager as well. And so I think though, the
• 5:40
  reason that like I went to go live with them, I was only
• 5:43
  supposed to be with them for a little bit after I had come back
• 5:46
  into foster care, I was going on a respite.
• 5:48
  So it was like, you're going to stay there for a weekend.
• 5:50
  And if anybody's like does foster care, they're going to
• 5:52
  know exactly what I'm talking about.
• 5:54
  It's like a respite usually just stays because it's like they're
• 5:57
  they don't have a home to go to. So I was only supposed to stay
• 6:01
  for the weekend 'cause. Temporary thing with this
• 6:03
  family. Yeah.
• 6:04
  And I just ended up staying for longer than that.
• 6:08
  It was the summer time. And so they're like, well, we're
• 6:11
  not moving to Washington for a little while, so she can stay
• 6:14
  with us for a little while. Our license is still open.
• 6:16
  And my younger sibling siblings, they knew that their biological
• 6:21
  mom was pregnant and she struggled with addiction and
• 6:26
  stuff like that. And so they knew the likelihood
• 6:28
  that the baby was going to come back in and care was high.
• 6:31
  And so they wanted to keep the kids together.
• 6:33
  They didn't want them to have to be broken up.
• 6:34
  And so they kept their home open for that.
• 6:37
  And so because they kept their home open for my younger brother
• 6:40
  who was in utero at the time, I was able to come and, and live
• 6:43
  with him and through just like go, we went to like a wedding.
• 6:48
  I've never been to a wedding before.
• 6:50
  It was like a giant Catholic wedding too.
• 6:52
  So it was like there was a wedding and it was like, you
• 6:54
  know, but seeing that and then seeing just like how the family
• 6:59
  kind of operated. We went across the country.
• 7:01
  It was actually in San Diego where this wedding was at.
• 7:04
  And then we went back. I was already planning to age
• 7:08
  out at this point. Because when you're a kid in
• 7:11
  foster care and you come in with all these issues, it's like if
• 7:14
  you're a teenager, one of the best things that the state can
• 7:18
  do for you, at least it seems, in the conventional way, is to
• 7:23
  help you prepare to not get adopted, essentially because the
• 7:27
  likelihood for you to get adopted is like so low.
• 7:29
  And so whenever I came back into care, they were already at 15
• 7:33
  preparing me for like independent living classes, like
• 7:36
  go learn how to like run your own household successfully and
• 7:41
  get a job and get all these things.
• 7:42
  And so I was just pretty much told from the get go, you're not
• 7:46
  going to get adopted. So you need to.
• 7:49
  Yeah. And I would tell anybody and
• 7:51
  everybody that was in charge of helping me with my care that
• 7:56
  that's what I wanted. I don't need a family.
• 7:58
  I don't want a family. I'm going to be an independent
• 8:01
  thing. I kind of made this thing kind
• 8:02
  of like my identity. And when I went across that, the
• 8:05
  cross country trip and I came back, I was like, I don't know
• 8:08
  if I actually do want to not like I kind of want a family.
• 8:11
  Like deep down I wanted a family.
• 8:13
  But my parents had pulled, they pulled me aside and they were
• 8:17
  like, do you want to be adopted? Because of course I was already
• 8:20
  saying like, I'm going to do independent living and like I
• 8:22
  don't need anybody. And then I just was like, yes, I
• 8:24
  do want to be adopted. And so I got adopted and they
• 8:28
  made actually an exemption because I hadn't been with my
• 8:30
  parents for six months yet they made an exception for me to get
• 8:35
  adopted early in the state. And actually this, this judge
• 8:39
  had been my judge for my like entire like hit like from the
• 8:44
  time I first went into foster care at 3 all the way to getting
• 8:47
  adopted for the last time. Like he had been the same judge
• 8:50
  that whole time. And so he knew like my story and
• 8:53
  my history and everything. And so he allowed me to be
• 8:58
  adopted and moved to Washington with my family.
• 9:00
  But they, they were always doing the thing like they just, they,
• 9:06
  if their home was open, they allowed kids to come.
• 9:10
  Like so many kids came through their home and they took on
• 9:13
  teenagers and teenagers. Like I knew so many amazing
• 9:18
  teenagers, like, like they were good kids.
• 9:22
  Yeah. And and foster care who went to
• 9:25
  group homes for behavioral health just simply because they
• 9:28
  didn't have bed to put them in. And so it's like they kept their
• 9:30
  home open for that and they kids could go and they were young and
• 9:36
  people are like, you're crazy. You're like, they're going to,
• 9:39
  you know, they, they were some of the best temperament for that
• 9:44
  too, because my mom, she's just as like a straight shooter, like
• 9:48
  she's not, you don't play her like you can't manipulate her or
• 9:54
  anything like that. And so it actually worked out
• 9:56
  pretty well because kids are in survival mode when they come in.
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  And so she was able that it was a good, it was actually a good
• 10:06
  fit, even though she was young, you know, even though people
• 10:08
  were like. She was tough.
• 10:09
  Yeah, yeah, in a good way. So wait, how many?
• 10:12
  So you've got this 25 year old and 29 year old mom and dad.
• 10:17
  You're just living in that with them temporarily.
• 10:20
  You start to bond and then they say, do you want us to adopt
• 10:25
  you? And you're like, actually, yeah.
• 10:26
  Yeah. How, how did that feel when they
• 10:29
  said we want to adopt you? What was your heart and mind
• 10:33
  like? And I, I know we got to go back
• 10:35
  to the beginning with your story, but we're starting here.
• 10:38
  I think I just, I was glad to not have to just kind of lie
• 10:42
  about what I wanted anymore. I was like, oh, I don't have
• 10:45
  like, I don't have to do that. Like there is actually other
• 10:47
  options and I'm not like going to get, I'm not going to have to
• 10:50
  like have myself let down or anything like that.
• 10:53
  Like this is really going to happen.
• 10:54
  But also there was some like, is it really going to happen?
• 11:00
  You know, because I've been through failed adoption and
• 11:04
  there's like a sense of like vulnerability.
• 11:06
  But after I did get adopted, there was so much that there was
• 11:10
  so much that happened that it was almost like I didn't really
• 11:13
  sit in that thought process for a long time.
• 11:15
  I didn't really doubt like, are my parents going to give me up
• 11:18
  or anything. It just was like, this is what
• 11:20
  we're doing now. Like that's the direction we're
• 11:23
  going. There was not really like this
• 11:24
  big epiphany or anything or like this big sigh of relief.
• 11:28
  It was just like, I don't have to prepare to be family less
• 11:34
  now. And then when you were adopted,
• 11:38
  you said they were taking in other kids.
• 11:40
  So how many kids? So by the time you were adopted,
• 11:43
  at maybe 16, was it? Yeah.
• 11:45
  How many biological kids did they have, if any?
• 11:48
  They didn't have any. Did they ever have biological?
• 11:50
  Kids. No, they never have biological
• 11:52
  kids. And they ended up adopting 9.
• 11:54
  Total they're they adopted 9 children total together.
• 11:57
  And of those nine, they were, they were included babies.
• 12:01
  So they were raising babies. They were raising teens.
• 12:03
  They were. Yeah.
• 12:04
  It's really incredible. Yeah, it's actually, it's a
• 12:08
  wild. We did foster care.
• 12:10
  My husband and I did foster care for a little while and we ended
• 12:14
  up having to close our home. But when we took in foster kids,
• 12:17
  we kind of took in, we took in several teenagers and I'm like
• 12:21
  my parents did. It's hard.
• 12:24
  It's hard. And I, I don't ever want to
• 12:26
  sugarcoat it with people to say like that foster care and the
• 12:29
  children that are coming into foster care, like they come with
• 12:33
  baggage. Kids, toddlers, teenagers, all
• 12:37
  difficult with stable homes. They come with their own
• 12:40
  challenges. Even if they were born to you
• 12:43
  and you raise them ground up, they can come with their own
• 12:45
  challenges. And and when you have teenagers
• 12:49
  that come in who have abuse or instability or they never had a
• 12:56
  dad in the home, a lot of fatherlessness in in the foster
• 12:59
  care system, parents didn't actually ever want to raise
• 13:02
  them. They never felt important.
• 13:03
  Like all of that baggage that's coming is like an extra level.
• 13:06
  So it's like not just young people raising teenagers, it's
• 13:09
  like young people raising teenagers and kids while also
• 13:15
  handling biological family thrown in the mix.
• 13:19
  It's like it's a, it can be a very challenging thing.
• 13:23
  I think that even I didn't understand at a level until I
• 13:26
  did it, that as a foster child, I knew what it was like to be a
• 13:29
  foster child, but I never knew what it was like to be a foster
• 13:31
  parent. So the level of commitment that
• 13:34
  they showed and just willingness is, it's pretty astounding.
• 13:39
  It's beautiful. Yeah.
• 13:41
  I want to get back to them. And how and also your experience
• 13:43
  fostering. And then obviously you're
• 13:45
  meeting your husband, having your own kids.
• 13:47
  But I want to go back to the beginning.
• 13:51
  You know, little Amy, growing up with her, I think it was a
• 13:55
  single dad. But what were the circumstances
• 13:57
  of your early years? Yeah.
• 14:00
  And then how did you end up in foster care the first time?
• 14:02
  Yeah, I grew up with a single dad because my mom left for a
• 14:07
  pack of cigarettes whenever I was two months old and just,
• 14:09
  like, never came home. And this is like her MO, though
• 14:13
  I actually have a lot of, I don't know how many biological
• 14:15
  siblings I have. I just know there's a lot out
• 14:17
  there because this is kind of like what she would do.
• 14:20
  And I have an older biological sister and she's a year older
• 14:23
  than me. And my dad was just like, one
• 14:26
  day out of the blue, he's married to his wife, who just
• 14:30
  like, never came home and then just was like, you're on your
• 14:32
  own. Did you try to find her?
• 14:34
  I, I actually don't know. I know that they knew like my
• 14:38
  biological family had been in touch.
• 14:40
  I knew I found that out as a teenager.
• 14:42
  So I'm guessing there was some level of like communication of
• 14:47
  some sort, Like they knew that she left willingly.
• 14:49
  It was like a missing persons thing.
• 14:51
  But she just relinquished care and you're two months old at
• 14:54
  this point. Yeah, she had a drug.
• 14:57
  She had drug issues. I don't think that she did while
• 15:00
  like pregnant with me or my sister or even in a relationship
• 15:02
  with my dad. But like she, whenever I got
• 15:06
  married, she had actually died of a drug overdose like a couple
• 15:09
  weeks before my, my wedding. So I think that that had she had
• 15:12
  just struggled for years with that.
• 15:15
  And she, yeah, she left at two months old and I left my dad as
• 15:18
  a single dad and. With a 2 month old and a one
• 15:20
  year old A. 2 month old and a one year old and he had a an, a
• 15:24
  drug or not a drug, an alcohol addiction problem and he was a
• 15:28
  very angry. He was a very angry person and
• 15:33
  which under the stress of like the best circumstances that
• 15:35
  would be very stressful to be a single parent.
• 15:38
  But we lived with him until I was 5 or no, whenever I was
• 15:44
  three, we went in the foster care system for the first time
• 15:47
  and it's really foggy. Like I can't really remember a
• 15:49
  lot of it. But we went into the foster care
• 15:52
  system because my sister had an injury and then they found out
• 15:57
  that like there was some instability.
• 15:59
  So we go into the foster care system, but we ended up going
• 16:01
  back to him and we were, we lived with him until like just
• 16:07
  after 911 happened and we were homeless.
• 16:11
  We lived in the back of our car and we went from like how?
• 16:14
  Old were you at this? Point I I would have been 5-5 or
• 16:16
  six and I went to the counselor's office frequently
• 16:21
  because they could just tell I think that something was up and,
• 16:24
  and I told them like I had no idea.
• 16:27
  I thought it was like a cool thing that I lived in a car.
• 16:29
  And then I remember I was like sitting in the office one day.
• 16:35
  I knew it was supposed to be a parent teacher conference.
• 16:37
  My dad was supposed to come pick me up.
• 16:38
  And there was this lady that was like riding out to check out a
• 16:41
  child. And I remember, like looking at
• 16:43
  her, she had brown hair like me, and she was really pretty.
• 16:46
  And I just always had this thing whenever I was a kid that I
• 16:49
  would just imagine any Pretty Woman that looked like me, like
• 16:51
  I wish she was like my mom. And I was thinking about that
• 16:54
  with this lady. And then two police officers
• 16:56
  walked in and I was like, that's kind of weird.
• 16:59
  And I was kind of scared of police just because they were,
• 17:03
  they just were never around. Like it was just not good when
• 17:06
  they were around. Usually it was because somebody
• 17:07
  was doing something wrong. But she came up to me and she
• 17:10
  actually was the lady from the state who was taking me into
• 17:12
  foster care. And I was like, I almost like
• 17:15
  felt betrayed by her because I was like, Oh my gosh, I was just
• 17:18
  like wishing that you were my mom.
• 17:19
  And I thought I was going into foster care because my dad was
• 17:21
  late to pick me up from parent teacher conferences.
• 17:25
  But when when I went with them, they actually let me say goodbye
• 17:29
  to my dad. And my dad said like whispered
• 17:31
  in my ear in front of them too. It's like so dumb.
• 17:33
  But he said like, don't tell them anything.
• 17:36
  And we were physically abused a lot by my dad.
• 17:41
  He was very violent and he already had anger issues.
• 17:44
  And so that is it was just like that was already a parent and I
• 17:50
  didn't really tell, I don't remember telling the counselor
• 17:53
  about that or the physical abuse.
• 17:55
  But we didn't go to family. We ended up being placed in the
• 18:00
  foster care, like into the cycle of foster care and we went to
• 18:04
  homes and at that time, like we got to stay together.
• 18:06
  Me and my sister got to stay together.
• 18:08
  And the the state is usually pretty good about trying to keep
• 18:11
  siblings together or trying to place them with family.
• 18:14
  But we went and ended up at a house that there was lots of
• 18:19
  kids and the foster dad was actually like an angry
• 18:23
  alcoholic. And it was just like one place
• 18:26
  that was just like copy and paste into another place.
• 18:28
  But that there was a foster mom there.
• 18:31
  She was like really timid. And I'm pretty sure there was
• 18:34
  like abuse happening there, but a really not great home.
• 18:39
  I call it like the House of horrors because I experienced a
• 18:42
  lot of abuse and sexual abuse in that home by other foster
• 18:46
  children. And after that, my sister and I
• 18:49
  got split up because this state realized like something was
• 18:54
  going on. And so my sister and I got split
• 18:56
  up and over several years from probably about four years after
• 19:01
  that, my dad's rights were terminated and we got adopted.
• 19:06
  But when we moved in with an adopt, they, they usually will
• 19:10
  like try you out with an adoptive family because some
• 19:12
  people just go in, they don't go in to be foster parents.
• 19:14
  They just go in to adopt children and so they'll place a
• 19:18
  child that's ready to be adopted into the home to see how it
• 19:20
  goes. And they, I had a lot of
• 19:24
  behavior issues because I didn't have any stability.
• 19:28
  I saw like rage. And so that was just like, I
• 19:31
  don't, I'm not going to say it was like a learned habit, but it
• 19:33
  was never something that I had to unlearn because it was
• 19:35
  something that was normal in my environment.
• 19:37
  And I was a really hard child. My sister had a like a different
• 19:43
  survival instinct. I would say it's just more
• 19:45
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• 19:49
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• 19:52
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• 19:56
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• 20:00
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• 22:53
  You had been abused by your dad. You're in this adoptive family
• 22:56
  situation. They adopt your sister, but then
• 22:59
  they say they don't want you. Yeah, I was 9.
• 23:04
  So I think that there was only so much.
• 23:07
  There's no trying to understand the situation when you're 9
• 23:10
  years old, like you just it was just I'd already been moved from
• 23:15
  home to home. They had split my sister up, put
• 23:17
  us back together and over 4 years for me, that's like half
• 23:21
  my life at that point. And so that was all I really
• 23:24
  knew and understood. And so I I just, it was just
• 23:29
  like another thing of being like rejected.
• 23:32
  And I would say it probably did come out and more of my behavior
• 23:38
  and just my reaction to it definitely played a part.
• 23:45
  Maybe not in that moment, but definitely you're just down the
• 23:48
  line. And a lot of decisions that I
• 23:49
  made that actually caused me to go back into the foster care
• 23:53
  system was just a lot of like people pleasing, a lot of trying
• 24:00
  to be valued to other people and a lot of acting certain ways
• 24:05
  because I was trying to get the reaction from other people like
• 24:08
  that I was valuable. So maybe in that moment, I think
• 24:11
  I just I'd already not lived with my sister for a little bit,
• 24:15
  so that part wasn't as foreign to me, but they they're wanting
• 24:20
  her. I think the only thing that like
• 24:23
  caused me from not just feeling like totally lost cause is that
• 24:28
  I almost immediately went and was placed with another family
• 24:31
  that was wanted to adopt me. So I would say it affected me
• 24:35
  later, but in that moment I think that God allowed it to me
• 24:38
  to kind of be shielded from it. And the second family that
• 24:42
  adopted you, this was the one that you were with from 9 to 14.
• 24:47
  Yeah, 9 to 13, nine to 13. Yeah.
• 24:49
  I lived with them and they were more of like more passive, like
• 24:54
  they were Christians. But it's hard to explain like
• 24:59
  the time from Christianity that we were around.
• 25:02
  It's very, I'm from the Bible Belt, so maybe people who live
• 25:06
  in the Bible Belt would understand that it was more of
• 25:07
  like you just, it's like a thing you do.
• 25:09
  It's not really it wasn't a part of like my life.
• 25:13
  It was not like an an instruction in teaching the
• 25:17
  Christian walk was much like this is just kind of how you act
• 25:21
  as a Christian. It wasn't really like this is a
• 25:23
  deep relationship with the Lord. I'm not saying that they didn't
• 25:26
  know the Lord or that that didn't.
• 25:28
  It wasn't as real in your daily life.
• 25:30
  You didn't feel it wasn't something that you really
• 25:32
  identified in your daily life. It was more like, we're
• 25:34
  Christians. We go to church, but this idea
• 25:37
  of like Jesus is with you, like the Holy Spirit, like you know
• 25:40
  God has a plan like that was not as.
• 25:42
  No, that wasn't. No, it wasn't.
• 25:45
  And so I really just focused a lot on like the actions that I
• 25:49
  was doing, if like getting a certain outcome from how I was
• 25:53
  acting. And I struggled for years of
• 25:55
  just like anger issues. And it came out in my
• 26:00
  relationships at school is always pretty good with like
• 26:04
  school work itself. But the relationships really
• 26:08
  from early on, I did was not good at choosing friends and I
• 26:12
  was really good at hiding the type of friends that I had for
• 26:14
  my parents, even from young age. And so I ended up moving schools
• 26:21
  whenever I was in the eighth grade and I because I had told
• 26:24
  my parents like I, I'm in with the wrong crowd.
• 26:27
  And I was always like in ISS getting suspended and stuff.
• 26:31
  And so they're like, OK, well, we're going to move these
• 26:32
  schools and that's fine. So they drove me to another
• 26:35
  school just like a town away. And I got an exemption.
• 26:37
  I got to switch schools and I ended up in an even worse crowd
• 26:42
  only in in this town. Now, I was exposed not just to
• 26:44
  like bad behavior or speaking out in class or, you know,
• 26:48
  getting in trouble at school, but I was exposed to drugs and
• 26:51
  alcohol. And so I kind of started down
• 26:55
  that path and it was for a very short period of time.
• 26:58
  Now looking back, it felt like a really long time that I was
• 27:00
  doing this, but it was for about 6 months and I got picked up for
• 27:04
  shoplifting. My parents came and got me and I
• 27:07
  got into a really big argument with my parents and.
• 27:11
  Did they have other kids at this point?
• 27:12
  No, I, well, they had, he had a son, but his son was like 15
• 27:17
  years ago with me. He was already in his 20s.
• 27:19
  So I was just like their only child when I lived with him.
• 27:23
  I was an only child essentially. But whenever I got picked up for
• 27:27
  shoplifting and I got into a fight with my parents, they were
• 27:29
  going to put me in like a behavior group home.
• 27:33
  But they were, they were actually closed.
• 27:35
  It was like after 5. So they couldn't do that, which
• 27:37
  is kind of ironic, but I ended up going and living with my
• 27:39
  friend that I got caught, caught shoplifting with and who I was
• 27:44
  in with like the drugs and the alcohol.
• 27:47
  And they saw a big major behavioral change in me in those
• 27:50
  six months that I, that I had shifted schools and but they, I
• 27:55
  don't think they understood I was really good.
• 27:57
  Like I said, like hiding the type of friends that I was
• 27:59
  around. And I ended up going and living
• 28:04
  with that friend. And then several months in, I, I
• 28:10
  say that this is God because I'm getting to do pretty much
• 28:14
  whatever I want. I'm getting a party.
• 28:16
  I have a boyfriend. I have all this stuff that is
• 28:19
  like, I have all of my freedom. But something in me was like, I
• 28:24
  don't want to do. I don't want to live like this.
• 28:26
  Like it just was, it was had to have been God before I knew him
• 28:32
  because I called my parents from school and I was like, I don't
• 28:36
  want to live like this. Like I need help.
• 28:38
  And I'm in the eighth grade. So I don't, I know 8th graders
• 28:43
  now and I know some that are really struggle with certain
• 28:47
  things. And I'm like, I could just never
• 28:49
  imagine you doing that. So I know that it couldn't have
• 28:51
  been me. And they came and they ended up,
• 28:54
  I ended up getting into a rehabilitation Center for youth
• 28:58
  and I got into more trouble at this rehabilitation center.
• 29:02
  And I was actually being bullied at this place.
• 29:06
  But my retaliation was to like physically like get back in
• 29:12
  their face and yelling and everything.
• 29:14
  And this is a place where you would go because the court made
• 29:18
  you go there. So all these kids that are
• 29:20
  there, they've been in the system like the not the foster
• 29:26
  care system, but like the police system, the judiciary system.
• 29:31
  It's not juvenile hall, but it's not step towards it almost.
• 29:34
  Yeah, and if you got kicked out, you were you're going to
• 29:37
  juvenile hall. And so I was in there on a
• 29:40
  Finn's case. So because we it was really
• 29:43
  expensive to send your kid to rehab, the state helped send me.
• 29:48
  And so when they have like a 0 tolerance for fighting.
• 29:54
  So if you get kicked out, you have to go because you're in
• 29:56
  there on a court order and you have to go to the get
• 29:59
  essentially you get arrested and then you get sent to juvenile
• 30:02
  hall. And so these girls go to
• 30:04
  juvenile hall. Well, I got pulled into the
• 30:07
  office and they said I wasn't under arrest, but I would they
• 30:13
  had to transport from DHS were going to be there to get me
• 30:18
  soon. And I was like, why is DHS
• 30:20
  coming? Like I've been in the, the
• 30:23
  Department of Human Services. I think it's called DCFS now.
• 30:28
  I think that I don't know if that was like an old school
• 30:30
  term, but I knew it meant foster care.
• 30:33
  And so I was like, that's really weird that they're coming to get
• 30:36
  me because I don't have to go to jail.
• 30:38
  But why do I have to go there? Is it because I don't have to go
• 30:40
  to jail that I have to go there? I don't know, like if you had.
• 30:42
  Adoptive parents at this point. Yeah, I'd been adopted for five
• 30:45
  years. Were you?
• 30:46
  Thinking where are my adoptive parents?
• 30:48
  Yeah. And I asked them.
• 30:49
  I was like, well, I have parents.
• 30:52
  Like, I'm not in foster care. My parents.
• 30:55
  Why aren't my parents just coming to get me?
• 30:57
  And I was really far away from my parents.
• 30:59
  It was like 5 hours away. And so I thought maybe it's just
• 31:02
  like, they're taking me back. And they said, well, your
• 31:05
  parents requested that you go back with the state.
• 31:09
  And I was like, yeah, like, give a kid, you know, like, my brain
• 31:13
  just couldn't process. It how old were you at this
• 31:15
  point? I was 14, almost 15 and I was
• 31:18
  like, OK. And you've been with them since
• 31:20
  you were 9? Since I was nine, yeah.
• 31:22
  And they didn't tell you, they just.
• 31:24
  No, they didn't. They just dropped you back off.
• 31:27
  No, yeah, they didn't. Even drop you back.
• 31:29
  Off. No, I was in.
• 31:30
  Yeah, I'd been in rehab and I'd seen them the weekend before.
• 31:33
  And they didn't say anything. No, no, it's kind of out of
• 31:37
  nowhere. I think.
• 31:41
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 31:44
  I don't, I don't want to say it and it be mean.
• 31:47
  I think it was cowardice. I think that because so I go
• 31:53
  went back into the foster care system and I ended up going and
• 31:56
  I had to go to court because you're like in court all the
• 31:59
  time whenever you're in foster care.
• 32:01
  And the judge who is the same judge that had been with me like
• 32:04
  my whole life, made them tell me and like she didn't look at me
• 32:11
  and tell me. So it was, yeah, it was awful.
• 32:14
  It was, it was not, I mean, I, when you have a child that you
• 32:21
  adopt, because people are always astonished.
• 32:23
  They're like, can you give an adopted child back?
• 32:25
  It's actually child abandonment. They don't say like you had a
• 32:29
  child and you adopted them. Like they coined the phrase you
• 32:33
  had a failed adoption, but you had a failed adoption post
• 32:36
  adoption. You, you gave up your biological
• 32:39
  child in the eyes of the law. Like there's no differentiation
• 32:42
  for like the legal relinquishing of your right as a parent.
• 32:46
  So I essentially was like abandoned illegally and I went
• 32:52
  back into the foster care system and I was just like wrecked.
• 32:55
  After that. I had called them actually
• 32:57
  whenever I first went back in and I was like, let me talk to
• 33:00
  my parents because there's once I finally got to the DHS office,
• 33:03
  like I realized, oh, like this is not just I think in my mind,
• 33:09
  I thought, I'm going to get back and then I'm going to convince
• 33:12
  my parents to come pick me up because what the heck am I
• 33:15
  going? Like they is this just like a
• 33:16
  stint in foster care because they're like mad at me or
• 33:19
  something. But I saw, I walked in and like
• 33:22
  I looked across all the cubicles and I saw like this area that
• 33:25
  has like this big empty office and I saw all of my possessions
• 33:28
  were in there. Like they had already packed up
• 33:30
  all my stuff and like giving it back to me.
• 33:32
  And, and it was, and it was at that point and I was like, let
• 33:37
  me call my parents. And they were like, you're just
• 33:38
  going to, you're going to go with the state and this is what
• 33:40
  it is. And it was kind of like this
• 33:41
  scripted thing that they were giving me over and over.
• 33:43
  And I actually had a place to go.
• 33:45
  Like I was telling you earlier, it's really hard to find a place
• 33:47
  for a teenager to go. I had like a regular home to go
• 33:52
  to, a regular foster home to go to.
• 33:54
  It was a couple who like they took in a lot of teenagers and
• 33:58
  stuff. And so I actually, I kind of bit
• 34:00
  the hand that fed me because I took that for granted and I was
• 34:06
  not very nice to them, but. Did you ask to call them and say
• 34:11
  like, were you thinking this must be a mistake?
• 34:15
  Yeah, I think once I saw all my stuff, I was like, you're going
• 34:19
  to let me call my parent? Like I was starting to spiral
• 34:22
  and freak out on this person and and he was like, OK, we'll,
• 34:28
  we'll let you talk to them 'cause it's like after hours
• 34:31
  there's like nobody there except for me, the transport ladies and
• 34:34
  this one caseworker and this. And your and your belongings.
• 34:37
  And all my stuff, yeah. And yeah, like I was saying,
• 34:41
  it's just kind of like a scripted thing that they gave me
• 34:43
  of like, you're going to go and you're going to live with, like
• 34:45
  you're going to be in foster care and this is what's best for
• 34:47
  you. Like they were your parents.
• 34:48
  Yeah, yeah. They were just like, this is
• 34:49
  what's going to be best for you. I was like, this is not like, I
• 34:53
  don't know if you've never been in foster care, but this is not
• 34:55
  what's best for me. Like I don't want to be here.
• 34:58
  And but I I did, I had like a home to go to by the grace of
• 35:02
  God. Like I didn't have to go and be
• 35:04
  at like a, a intervention place or anything.
• 35:09
  Did you have the words to even say like please don't do this
• 35:13
  to? Was that part of the like?
• 35:14
  Beg to come home. I was like, I know I screwed up
• 35:19
  like over the last six months, but like I will do whatever you
• 35:23
  want. Like please don't make me go
• 35:24
  into care, but I I don't know how long they had decided I
• 35:29
  don't. What What I mean, I don't know.
• 35:31
  I don't mean to harp on it, but you said they were Christians or
• 35:35
  you said that they. Yeah, they profess to be
• 35:39
  Christians. Do you?
• 35:40
  I mean, it's a big deal to abandon a child.
• 35:43
  Yeah, I talked to them years later about it because I tried,
• 35:48
  you know, I had kids and I tried to go and talk to them again.
• 35:53
  And it was very much like a taboo thing, like don't talk
• 35:56
  about what happened and just kind of like, it was a weird,
• 36:00
  weird. Like they they weren't willing
• 36:02
  to even confront what they had done and not.
• 36:04
  Really, I had asked them and they kind of just said that like
• 36:07
  it's what the state told them to do, but I just don't.
• 36:12
  And, and when you were begging not to go back into foster care,
• 36:14
  you've been abused in foster care, you had experienced all of
• 36:17
  these things. And, and we're going to get to
• 36:19
  the narrative that is used to justify abortion, that foster
• 36:23
  care is so rotten it's better for the child to die, which I
• 36:26
  know has been used on you. Like your life is.
• 36:28
  Suffering, we'd be better off not having happened.
• 36:32
  That's why abortion is so necessary.
• 36:33
  So we're going to get into all of that and a lot of your
• 36:35
  contents about that. But I do think it's really
• 36:37
  important to get real about what you experienced, what you
• 36:41
  endured. And I do want to hear your take
• 36:44
  on how we can improve it because I know you have thoughts on that
• 36:48
  too. But when they when you're in
• 36:52
  this position where you're discovering that this family
• 36:56
  that had adopted you, chosen you, adopted you, loved you for
• 36:59
  four years without even telling you why or how you're, you're
• 37:02
  out. Yeah.
• 37:05
  Was that the most hurtful thing in your life up until that
• 37:07
  point? If you can answer that, out of
• 37:09
  all the hurt you had experienced or how did that hit compared to
• 37:12
  everything else you had experienced?
• 37:14
  Yeah, I would say probably because children are very
• 37:18
  resilient to what they like. You can just totally kind of
• 37:21
  shift things. But once you hit like there's a
• 37:24
  certain unawareness that a child has when they hit a certain age
• 37:29
  like 9, 12, like they understand what's going on.
• 37:34
  So while my life before may have seemed like even more traumatic
• 37:38
  than that moment, that was probably the most traumatic
• 37:41
  because I had an understanding about what was going on.
• 37:44
  And also at the same time, IA 100% believe that God used it
• 37:53
  being my normal to protect me in that moment, because when I tell
• 37:59
  people like my story, they're like, how are you a functioning
• 38:05
  adult? And it's truly be first of all,
• 38:08
  that was like my normal. I didn't know stability.
• 38:11
  So if you know stability and then you don't know stability
• 38:14
  like and then stability is taken from you, that's one thing.
• 38:16
  But when you don't know stability at all, stability at
• 38:19
  all, then it it's not really like it's like old hat.
• 38:23
  So, but because I did understand that I was going back into the
• 38:27
  foster care system, I think it was like the most like flip
• 38:32
  things on your head type of a thing and kind of earth
• 38:35
  shattering news. And it was very much like out of
• 38:38
  my control. And I knew what was happening,
• 38:42
  but I didn't know what was coming.
• 38:44
  And so it was such a I, I've always kind of had a weird
• 38:49
  understanding of what it's like to be a parent or have parents.
• 38:53
  And I really have only understood that after becoming a
• 38:57
  parent. It didn't actually happen for me
• 38:59
  when I got adopted the second time.
• 39:03
  Were you scared? I think I was just like ticked
• 39:07
  off. I, I don't know if I was scared.
• 39:12
  I think I was very resilient and it was just the next thing that
• 39:18
  was going to happen. But I was angry and I was in
• 39:21
  desperate. Like I was desperate to have a
• 39:23
  sense of control. And so at least if things were
• 39:27
  like going to get screwed up, it was going to like be me to
• 39:30
  choose to screw them up type of a thing.
• 39:32
  But I it was kind of like the normal flow of things.
• 39:36
  So whenever I went to this foster family that I first went
• 39:39
  into placement with, this is just not my adoptive family now,
• 39:41
  but I, it was just like I just kind of came to terms with it
• 39:47
  and just settled into like the new normal.
• 39:50
  How many families did you have during your, I mean, I guess it
• 39:55
  would have been 15 years. No, no, it would have been,
• 39:57
  excuse me, 1210 years. In yeah, something like.
• 40:00
  That 10 to 12 years in and out of foster care.
• 40:03
  I the first time I went and I can't tell you I moved a lot.
• 40:09
  'Cause you were so little at that point, right?
• 40:10
  Just three years old. Yeah.
• 40:12
  And there's no telling how many families I stayed with only for
• 40:14
  like, a short period of time. Like even now as an adult,
• 40:17
  sometimes I'll think and I'm like, oh, that was a foster
• 40:20
  family. And I just, like, only, like,
• 40:22
  remember a tiny little thing that will jog my memory.
• 40:27
  But well over 10, I would say for sure.
• 40:32
  But it could be like exponentially more than that.
• 40:35
  I don't know. They don't like give you a list.
• 40:39
  Can you request a list not you're an adult be like I'd like
• 40:42
  to know who I stayed with. Yeah, no, I don't.
• 40:46
  I don't think so. And all that stuff is like
• 40:47
  sealed and stuff now too, because once you become adopted,
• 40:50
  like I was saying, you like they seal it and that's like a
• 40:53
  completely different person. So I've technically been like 3
• 40:57
  different people. What does that mean?
• 41:00
  Like your Social Security number changes, your entire identity
• 41:04
  changes, your name changes, some people choose not to change
• 41:08
  their children. 'S names Amy.
• 41:10
  No, but I don't want to say what her name was.
• 41:16
  Yeah, you chose my name, Amy. You.
• 41:17
  You became Amy with the last adoptive family.
• 41:20
  I became Amy whenever I was adopted the first time.
• 41:23
  So I kept that name. And then I my name, my middle
• 41:28
  name changed when I was adopted with my now family.
• 41:32
  Yeah. When you look back at all those
• 41:36
  years, you've used the word instability a few times.
• 41:40
  How do you think, like from your own lived experience, which I
• 41:44
  think there's nothing better to understand than like someone who
• 41:47
  can say this is what it was like.
• 41:49
  How do you think that effects assault, you know, a a kid in
• 41:53
  foster care who's going in and out, in and out, especially at a
• 41:56
  young age. We'll talk.
• 41:57
  You know, you were talking about older just a moment ago.
• 41:59
  But for those for that younger age, I know you don't remember
• 42:02
  everything, but, you know, you have kids of your own now.
• 42:06
  You're in a stable, loving Christian marriage now.
• 42:08
  We're going to get into that more, too.
• 42:10
  But from the perspective you have now, knowing what health is
• 42:13
  like. Yeah.
• 42:14
  How, how does it affect a child to to to be in and out of
• 42:18
  families like that? The foundation of having parents
• 42:24
  that well, first of all, that are just like married and
• 42:28
  together, even if they're not happy is provides Even so much
• 42:33
  more stability for a child. It gives them a safety because
• 42:37
  they can anticipate what's coming.
• 42:39
  When you cannot anticipate what's coming, you're constantly
• 42:43
  going to be in like a fight or flight mode.
• 42:46
  And it, I would say it, it completely shifts the foundation
• 42:54
  of a child, like the way that they learn, the way that they
• 42:57
  have relationships, the way that they bond to their parents, the
• 43:00
  way that they view themselves. That stability is so vital to
• 43:06
  provide like lifetime wise, providing like a good foundation
• 43:12
  to build on. It's the family unit and
• 43:15
  stability, even if it's not like the perfect one, which there are
• 43:19
  literally no perfect ones. So if anybody's like, I can't
• 43:22
  provide that for my child. So it's just best to, I don't
• 43:25
  want to put my child to that. No, nobody's perfect.
• 43:29
  But having that stability, not having that stability and
• 43:32
  removing that stability from a child is going to throw them
• 43:36
  into an inability to process like the world around them.
• 43:41
  It's going to affect every aspect of their life, how they
• 43:44
  view things. Because if it's like putting on
• 43:46
  a different pair of glasses, it's not.
• 43:50
  Everything might still operate the same, but the way that they
• 43:53
  see it is so different because that foundation is off.
• 43:58
  And so and the instability like for example, the one of the ways
• 44:02
  that it would manifest as an adult is I would create chaos
• 44:05
  around me. It's specifically like with my I
• 44:09
  almost can't vote for this in my marriage.
• 44:12
  I would do that in my marriage. I just love him so much.
• 44:18
  So I hate thinking about it, but I would start fights with my
• 44:22
  husband and I as I grew as a Christian and like found a
• 44:32
  stability and a safety with my husband.
• 44:34
  It made me realize like the oh, that's where it's coming from is
• 44:37
  because I would constantly stir up the norm that I had.
• 44:43
  And so because I never knew like the steadiness of things, I
• 44:50
  would constantly try to recreate my normal, which wasn't healthy.
• 44:54
  And so it's like you're causing, you're going to cause your child
• 44:57
  to have to break a pattern maybe like 50 years in the future.
• 45:03
  They may not realize it for a really long time.
• 45:05
  So I would say having that is one of the most important, any
• 45:11
  semblance of stability and is provides safety for your child.
• 45:21
  So not so not having it. Thank you for sharing this.
• 45:24
  So not having it. It's like, I mean, I've heard
• 45:26
  that too in like psychological literature and even in like my
• 45:29
  own therapy I've had and I again, like you are so strong.
• 45:33
  It's like it's mind blowing to me how strong you are.
• 45:35
  And I know you credit the grace of God, of course, but the grace
• 45:39
  of Jesus Christ. But yeah, I, I, I've heard in,
• 45:43
  you know, therapy and things like that, like you recreate
• 45:44
  your childhood patterns to what feels normal to you, even if
• 45:48
  it's super dysfunctional, super unhealthy, that's what you will
• 45:52
  do in adulthood. Like just because you're wired,
• 45:55
  you've wired yourself behaviorally that way.
• 45:57
  And so you have to redirect yourself intentionally to kind
• 46:01
  of retrain your emotions and your thought patterns and your
• 46:03
  behaviors. And I mean it from from your
• 46:07
  viewpoint, it's been your experience, is that an
• 46:09
  experience you think a lot of other kids may have coming from
• 46:12
  instability where they, they create and, and you get into the
• 46:16
  kind of generational chaos like, you know, divorces that kind of
• 46:19
  seem to pass on generation to generation and chaos that passes
• 46:23
  on because they haven't learned to get out of that pattern.
• 46:26
  It's like the generational curse, which are very real.
• 46:31
  But yeah, I would say that you're going to see that that
• 46:35
  that is going to be something that that a child like when they
• 46:40
  respond to it, I would say that they're going, yeah, that that
• 46:45
  is something that's not just that's not just down to like
• 46:50
  foster children, that's going to, you're going to see that.
• 46:52
  And like if a dad leaves or you see a divorce or something like
• 46:56
  that, that that creates a crack. And I'm not saying I'm not
• 47:02
  saying that there's never a valid reason.
• 47:04
  Like if you're being abused or whatever by your spouse, like
• 47:07
  you can't be like, well, I have to stick it out because I can't
• 47:10
  create instability for my child. Like it's not the sword to live
• 47:13
  and die on. I mean, abuse is instability,
• 47:16
  right? Yeah, it already has happened,
• 47:18
  yeah. But yeah, I don't remember
• 47:23
  exactly what your question was. No, I'm just commenting on on,
• 47:27
  you know, that the reality of of patterns and their impact
• 47:32
  throughout generations like you were saying, but then the power
• 47:35
  of breaking the pattern. Yeah, intentionally, which
• 47:38
  sounds like you've been you've, you're working on or you've
• 47:40
  done, which is incredible. And it's never.
• 47:43
  And you're willing to share, which I so appreciate because
• 47:45
  it's so powerful. Yeah, I think a lot of people
• 47:47
  see it and then they'll say like, so like say the for some
• 47:51
  reason, like you, you and your spouse, like you can't stay
• 47:54
  together and you don't want to create that instability.
• 47:56
  But it never it's with the grace and the power of God.
• 47:58
  There's never like a thing that's like, sorry, there's no
• 48:02
  overcoming that thing. Everybody has something.
• 48:06
  And if you don't think you have something like you need to talk
• 48:08
  to somebody because there's something everybody.
• 48:10
  I went, I went through a thing recently with some women at that
• 48:14
  in my church and it was just talking about you like you don't
• 48:17
  think that you do certain things.
• 48:19
  Like I had a good childhood. It was a stable childhood
• 48:21
  growing up, you know, and like it wasn't the normal.
• 48:24
  And it's like, but you do certain things and you have
• 48:26
  certain habits that you're trying to break that, you know,
• 48:28
  that don't honor the Lord. Like that comes from somewhere.
• 48:31
  It's almost always traced back to childhood.
• 48:34
  Like if you look at the rates of like homosexuality being traced
• 48:38
  back to childhood sex abuse rates are astounding.
• 48:41
  And that's just the people being honest with you.
• 48:43
  The amount of shame that you carry because you're a child and
• 48:47
  you're groomed to think the almost always whenever you're
• 48:51
  abused as a child, they convince you that you're a participant
• 48:55
  instead of a victim because they're grooming, you know?
• 48:58
  Sexual abuse. Yes, exactly.
• 48:59
  And so there's a certain amount of shame of it being something
• 49:02
  you participated. And so when you look at the
• 49:04
  stats of people that are being honest, it's almost always going
• 49:06
  to be way lower because especially for men, they're
• 49:13
  they're not going to be honest about certain things because
• 49:16
  they're carrying shame. And it's really hard to be
• 49:18
  honest with other people about shame that you carry.
• 49:20
  So you look at those things like deeply affect who you are as an
• 49:26
  adult. Like the like tracing back with
• 49:29
  the homosexuality and the sexual abuse that comes forward.
• 49:32
  Like you just see women a lot of times whenever they like the
• 49:36
  transgenders because they don't feel right in their body because
• 49:39
  somebody use their body in a way that was not intended by God and
• 49:43
  they did. They didn't have a right to use
• 49:44
  their body for. And so they want to get out of
• 49:46
  their body. Those feelings that they're
• 49:48
  experiencing are very real, is that they come from this
• 49:51
  foundation of childhood. Have you in your, I mean, you're
• 49:55
  out there now, your content's being viewed by millions of
• 49:58
  people, so you've had tons of people reach out to you as you
• 50:01
  Share your story. You're also involved in church
• 50:03
  ministry, you've involved in youth ministry, etcetera.
• 50:06
  Have you had people open up to you about those things in
• 50:09
  particular, like sexuality or transgender issues rooted back
• 50:12
  into childhood? Well, I actually see not so much
• 50:19
  adults, but I do see it in boys. I see because I work with like
• 50:27
  middle schoolers and stuff and I see like a pretty big
• 50:31
  correlation and how boys are outwardly performing and it
• 50:34
  directly ties to an unstable home environment, almost always
• 50:39
  divorce or single parent and. This is in youth ministry.
• 50:44
  Yeah. But just even seeing because we
• 50:48
  are in more of like an outreach area, it's not like a bunch of.
• 50:53
  Kids that don't come. Yeah, but like just they don't
• 50:55
  come. Their parents aren't coming to
• 50:57
  church. They come because they want to
• 50:58
  come, which is absolutely this kids are just phenomenal,
• 51:01
  amazing kids. But something that we I'm not
• 51:05
  the only adult to have recognized this is that we see
• 51:08
  that and we see that it is they're not coming from like
• 51:12
  this stable home environment. I don't want to share like too
• 51:16
  much about this. And it's not anything specific
• 51:18
  to maybe it's just one person that I know or that would know
• 51:21
  me. But I just see it as a trend in
• 51:23
  the community overall of like this huge shift.
• 51:27
  And I think it's also tied to like the use of social media and
• 51:31
  the constant comparison. But yeah, I would say it like
• 51:34
  childhood is going to set your course for a lot of things, a
• 51:37
  lot of worldview, a lot of the way that you see it, not just
• 51:40
  the way that you see yourself, but just the way that you see
• 51:42
  pretty much everything. What about the impact of abuse?
• 51:46
  Because there's like neglect and instability, which you talked a
• 51:51
  little bit about already, but abuse is another its own
• 51:55
  category. And then there's physical abuse
• 51:58
  and then sexual abuse. And they both have their own
• 52:00
  impacts. And so from your vantage point
• 52:02
  now, how do you see those things impacting, you know, you and
• 52:06
  then would you say sort of patterns that you think they
• 52:11
  impact adults? And then connected to that, what
• 52:13
  is healing look like? And that's a big question, but.
• 52:16
  Yeah. For me specifically experiencing
• 52:20
  those things, I think it took a lot of like recognizing first of
• 52:25
  all, the things that are happening to you when you're a
• 52:27
  child. As much as you want to say,
• 52:29
  like, I could have done this or I could have done that, it's
• 52:31
  pretty much almost always outside of your control.
• 52:34
  It really is up to the parent to make sure that the environment
• 52:37
  their child is growing up in is something that the parent is
• 52:40
  controlling. And I know a lot of people, like
• 52:41
  you need to let your child make these decisions and be their own
• 52:44
  person. And while I understand that and
• 52:46
  like I appreciate that it is a parent's job to make sure that
• 52:49
  their child is safe, to make sure, you know that their child
• 52:52
  is growing up in an environment that is going to shape their
• 52:56
  world view in a healthy way. But as it as the abuse from my
• 53:02
  childhood carried on, it has been since being married and
• 53:08
  having this ability of my marriage and the length of my
• 53:11
  marriage allowed me to have to, you know, look in retrospect and
• 53:16
  heal from those things. And healing from those things.
• 53:21
  Like if you have a child and they've experienced instability
• 53:24
  and like, maybe they're not out of childhood yet, or maybe
• 53:26
  they're an adult or whatever. All of it comes from like
• 53:29
  acknowledging it and being honest about it and not
• 53:31
  downplaying it too of like, well, everybody goes through
• 53:34
  hard things. It's like you have to
• 53:35
  acknowledge it. And then to take the power from
• 53:39
  the enemy and put it in the hands of the Lord abuses the
• 53:42
  Potter and he can make anything new, not just not just he can
• 53:47
  improve a really bad situation and he can like like he
• 53:52
  completely regenerates you. That's why when I explain to
• 53:55
  people, so it's not just pull yourself up by your bootstraps
• 54:00
  and learn and grow, Yes, you need to take accountability and
• 54:03
  responsibility for your choices moving forward because it can be
• 54:06
  really easy to slip into like this victim mentality.
• 54:08
  I could have ridden the coattails of my own victimhood
• 54:12
  from childhood and been a victim for the rest of my life.
• 54:16
  Or I can say I can't control what happened to me as a child,
• 54:21
  but I absolutely can't now also allow that to create other
• 54:25
  people to be victimized to my own victimhood, like my husband,
• 54:29
  who had no idea why I was fighting with him out of nowhere
• 54:33
  and causing stress and chaos in my marriage.
• 54:37
  That was my thing that I needed to go and take responsibility
• 54:41
  for. And so it's really, really hard
• 54:44
  to balance where you don't want to act like it's not a big deal,
• 54:48
  you just need to get over it. That's not what I'm saying.
• 54:51
  But there is a certain level of like pride that you have to let
• 54:58
  go of when it comes to that. Because while, while trauma is
• 55:04
  like deeply impactful and it is a horrible thing, there is a
• 55:11
  certain amount of pride that's associated with like trying to
• 55:15
  control how you respond to it. And so I've seen a lot of
• 55:19
  people, and I say this because this is, I was this person.
• 55:22
  It was like I had a bad thing happened to me.
• 55:25
  And so now I can make these choices and it's fine because I
• 55:28
  get a pass because the bad thing happened to me.
• 55:31
  And other people should feel bad for me because like they should,
• 55:35
  they should have more leniency for me because they feel bad for
• 55:40
  me. And trauma does not justify you
• 55:47
  making bad choices. It doesn't absolve you from the
• 55:50
  consequences of your further choices because you had a hard
• 55:53
  upbringing. Like everybody has something.
• 55:56
  That might sound a little harsh, but everybody has something.
• 56:00
  And some people's worse than others.
• 56:02
  But guess what? There's somebody that's worse
• 56:03
  than mine. And I can either be a victim for
• 56:07
  the rest of my life and I can allow that to impact my marriage
• 56:10
  and the way that I raised my children and make my children
• 56:12
  cater to my issues that I had as a child because I left them
• 56:16
  unchecked. I can pass it on, or I can
• 56:19
  release it to the Lord and allow it to be healed.
• 56:22
  Because if I keep holding on to it, then God can't.
• 56:26
  God's not going to pry it from my hands, isn't That's not how
• 56:29
  it works. So you have to allow Him to do
• 56:33
  the work in you. And if anybody thinks like, I'm
• 56:39
  just going to do it by myself, I'm not the type of person
• 56:42
  that's like, it only works for me because I'm a Christian and
• 56:45
  that's the religion that I accept like it.
• 56:48
  A true healing really only works with the Lord because he is the
• 56:52
  only source of true regeneration as a person.
• 56:57
  And so the healing has to come from acknowledging it.
• 57:02
  It is. It's a good issue.
• 57:03
  People don't have the ultimate healer.
• 57:07
  Sorry to interrupt because you were.
• 57:08
  No, it's true. It's true and people try to find
• 57:12
  the healing and like self help books, they try to find the
• 57:14
  healing and going to therapy. They try to find the healing in
• 57:17
  like the universe in yoga and trying to connect with their own
• 57:21
  thing, trying to be their own truth, trying to be their own
• 57:24
  source of happiness. And it's not there.
• 57:26
  It's just not there. And I know people are like you
• 57:29
  need to, I love to try to convince people of the truth.
• 57:33
  And I'm not just saying like I'm trying to convince you of the
• 57:35
  way I think I truly believe this is the truth.
• 57:39
  I don't like to go and try to convince people from a worldly
• 57:43
  secular standpoint because the worldly secular standpoint isn't
• 57:46
  actually correct. It's a half truth.
• 57:48
  And if it's not tied back to the where the source of truth is and
• 57:52
  we try to create truth outside of God, you've sold someone 1/2
• 57:57
  lie and that's a whole lie. So this whole like, will we try
• 58:02
  to convince people? Like when it comes to even just
• 58:07
  talking to people about the pro-life movement, I don't start
• 58:10
  with kind of the end. I start at the beginning.
• 58:15
  No, that person, it has dignity because they're made in the
• 58:18
  image of God. Like I'm trying to convince this
• 58:20
  person not just of the truth of that person's dignity, but I'm
• 58:23
  trying to convince them of the ultimate truth, which is Christ.
• 58:26
  Because this is a symptom of a generation and it's turned its
• 58:30
  back on God. The symptom of abortion and the
• 58:33
  rampant fatherless home, fatherlessness in homes and, you
• 58:39
  know, just sexual immorality in our culture and the decay and
• 58:43
  the depression and the anxiety is a God issue.
• 58:46
  It it's not a human issue. So you're not going to God
• 58:51
  issue. Yeah, exactly.
• 58:53
  So for you, what Jesus Christ is the answer to everything He is.
• 59:00
  Yeah. There's no, there's no like,
• 59:02
  yeah, he is, He is the way, you know that He is the truth.
• 59:05
  He is the life. So for you, though, practically
• 59:08
  applying that reality, right, That's the whole question of the
• 59:11
  Christian walk and Christian discipleship.
• 59:12
  And you have been through hell and back, like your childhood.
• 59:16
  We didn't even get into all the details.
• 59:18
  Like you just were like, and then I was abused and then I was
• 59:20
  abused for five years. And then I was, you know,
• 59:22
  neglected, abandoned, like everything.
• 59:25
  You, you endured so much. Here you are, you know, And and
• 59:29
  the only time that tears came to your eye so far in this
• 59:31
  conversation we were having is when you're talking about how
• 59:34
  you didn't love your husband as much as you wish you had, when
• 59:37
  you were holding on to wounds that you had or wrestling with
• 59:41
  these wounds. And that makes me want to cry
• 59:42
  because it's so beautiful. So I'm going to start crying
• 59:44
  here. It's hard.
• 59:45
  For me to talk about him. You must love him a lot.
• 59:50
  Love him a lot. So what has it looked like for
• 59:53
  you on a practical level to be healed of the abuse?
• 59:59
  We talked a little bit about the instability and the abandonment.
• 1:00:03
  You mentioned kind of having to go back and acknowledge it, that
• 1:00:06
  it happened. Right.
• 1:00:08
  What is that, if you're willing to share?
• 1:00:10
  Like what has that process looked like for you?
• 1:00:13
  Actually acknowledging it and growing from it 'cause you can
• 1:00:19
  have a tendency as a human being to think that you've dealt with
• 1:00:22
  something by just like stuffing it down and then putting it
• 1:00:25
  away. And because it doesn't impact
• 1:00:27
  you in like a super symptomatic way, you think like that you've
• 1:00:31
  healed from it. But just like acknowledging it
• 1:00:36
  has come over like the last two to three years really since the
• 1:00:40
  end of 2023 when I woke up to the chaos and my parents went
• 1:00:46
  through a really nasty divorce and my family just like, fell
• 1:00:50
  apart. I don't final adopted family.
• 1:00:53
  Yeah, I don't talk to my mom, my sibling, like my whole family
• 1:00:57
  has descended into chaos. And it has really, I have seen
• 1:01:04
  that it has really come from turning not just on the truth of
• 1:01:10
  God, but on obeying God. And as much as you can go and
• 1:01:16
  say that you believe in God, if you do not live a life that
• 1:01:21
  reflects that, you don't truly live in a submission of belief
• 1:01:27
  because Satan believes that God exists.
• 1:01:29
  Actually, Satan doesn't have faith.
• 1:01:30
  Like he knows. He's seen him.
• 1:01:33
  He knows him better than you or I.
• 1:01:35
  Probably more theologically like astute exactly to think about
• 1:01:39
  it, but it's true. Yeah, he may not have the Holy
• 1:01:41
  Spirit, we have that and he does not, but he knows.
• 1:01:45
  And so that is not a saving faith.
• 1:01:49
  Knowing the details of God is not enough.
• 1:01:51
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:01:52
  It's simple. Intellectual acknowledgement is
• 1:01:54
  not enough to have a life that gets to have the benefits of the
• 1:02:01
  Holy Spirit first. It's not just about that.
• 1:02:03
  If we never, God never gifted us the Holy Spirit, it would still
• 1:02:06
  be sufficient. If God never saved us, it was we
• 1:02:09
  would still be getting exactly what we earned.
• 1:02:13
  But with the Holy Spirit comes fruit, and if you don't respond
• 1:02:19
  to that fruit, you quench the Spirit.
• 1:02:22
  You're not going to be able to live a life free in Christ.
• 1:02:26
  Are you talking about the disobedience of your parents
• 1:02:29
  divorcing? I'm not just I'm not, I'm not
• 1:02:31
  necessarily talking about that, although I really struggle with
• 1:02:35
  that. And out of like respect and of
• 1:02:37
  their privacy, I can't like disclose the why.
• 1:02:41
  There was justification for certain things, but I'm talking
• 1:02:44
  about that. I didn't have a lot of healing
• 1:02:46
  because until 2023, I called myself a Christian.
• 1:02:50
  I said that I believed in God. I lived in the Bible Belt, but I
• 1:02:55
  did not live like a Christian. I didn't love my husband like a
• 1:02:58
  Christian. I didn't love my children like a
• 1:02:59
  Christian mother. I was not worried for my
• 1:03:01
  children's souls. I wasn't worried for my soul.
• 1:03:04
  I had a superficial, bloated, squishy understanding of what I
• 1:03:11
  meant to know God. And when I realized that I was
• 1:03:17
  living a lukewarm faith that was not in obedience to God when the
• 1:03:22
  shift happened. There is a shift.
• 1:03:26
  There's absolutely a shift. And if you're a Christian, I
• 1:03:29
  would say the one caveat is if you grew up in the church and
• 1:03:31
  you just always loved God, because I think about like
• 1:03:34
  people like Elisa Childress, who's like, I just grew up and I
• 1:03:38
  just knew God and I just love God.
• 1:03:39
  Like I think that those people can exist, right?
• 1:03:42
  But if you weren't a Christian, then you're like, I became a
• 1:03:45
  Christian and God became a part of my life.
• 1:03:48
  But like you don't look different.
• 1:03:49
  You didn't come, you didn't become a Christian.
• 1:03:52
  Like I don't even want to judge someone's faith but or salvation
• 1:03:56
  the. Fruit.
• 1:03:56
  You'll know them by their fruits.
• 1:03:58
  But you will know them by. Their fruit but but when you're
• 1:04:00
  18 and you're getting married as Christians and and and from what
• 1:04:05
  I understand, you decided with your husband we're not going to
• 1:04:08
  have sex before marriage like you.
• 1:04:09
  Didn't even kiss. You didn't even kiss.
• 1:04:11
  Yeah. So you were trying to obey right
• 1:04:15
  God and follow him. So there.
• 1:04:18
  That's not lukewarm, because lukewarm would have been like,
• 1:04:20
  whatever. But there is.
• 1:04:24
  I did a lot of things to achieve the appearance of being a
• 1:04:29
  Christian. So it didn't come from a place
• 1:04:32
  of. I try to put fruit on my own
• 1:04:33
  tree. Interesting.
• 1:04:35
  So I was like, I'm going to Christian is good, I want to be
• 1:04:38
  Christian, God is God, so I'm going to do these XYZ Christian
• 1:04:41
  things. So there was a lack of this
• 1:04:44
  deepest movement of your heart, of complete surrender.
• 1:04:47
  Correct. Yeah.
• 1:04:48
  And I carry that for so many years.
• 1:04:50
  That's why in my marriage, I could still treat my husband and
• 1:04:53
  then an ungodly manner and like I didn't have the deep
• 1:04:59
  conviction. I had guilt, but I didn't have
• 1:05:02
  Holy Spirit conviction. And I feel like there's a
• 1:05:03
  difference because you see people that reject God, but they
• 1:05:06
  still have guilt, but that that's because God's law is
• 1:05:09
  written on our heart, right? So you're going to have a flash
• 1:05:11
  of being able to discern it and know it that you did something.
• 1:05:16
  But the mark of a Christian is your response to that.
• 1:05:19
  And so I was not living in a response that was of obedience.
• 1:05:22
  I was living in a response of like, I'm just going to try to
• 1:05:25
  fix the symptoms. And whenever God was like,
• 1:05:29
  you're on the road to hell if you do not wake up like your
• 1:05:34
  faith is, you can say that I'm real, but it's not, you're not
• 1:05:38
  living. It's not just I think it's the
• 1:05:41
  word pesavo when it talks about if you confess and believe that
• 1:05:44
  Jesus Christ is Lord, then you will be saved.
• 1:05:47
  The believe there is not intellectual and it it is a
• 1:05:51
  hard. It means yeah to relinquish and
• 1:05:53
  to live in submission. Everything.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah. And you're not doing it your
• 1:05:57
  way. You're going to live.
• 1:05:58
  And that's not, that's not works.
• 1:06:01
  That's not works. Like I'm trying to earn my
• 1:06:02
  salvation. It's you have salvation.
• 1:06:04
  So that's going to come. What was it, though?
• 1:06:07
  You said around 2023 that, well, your family descended into
• 1:06:12
  chaos. As you said, your parents
• 1:06:13
  divorced. This is this beautiful family
• 1:06:15
  with these 10 adopted kids, and now it's all shattered.
• 1:06:17
  I mean, that sounds devastating, totally devastating.
• 1:06:20
  Total World flipped upside down and it was actually out of that
• 1:06:24
  and my husband ministering to me through that that I came to know
• 1:06:30
  a deeper understanding of the Lord.
• 1:06:32
  My parents were a catalyst for me being exposed to Christianity
• 1:06:36
  and knowing Christianity and they called me to a high calling
• 1:06:39
  as a professing Christian. My parents held me accountable,
• 1:06:44
  which is ironic. I still am grateful for it, even
• 1:06:46
  if though it's crazy now. But in 2023, I had gone to my
• 1:06:52
  dad's house for Christmas Eve and he was remarried and the
• 1:06:55
  kids were there for the evening. But then the next morning they
• 1:06:57
  had to go to my mom's house and nobody was together for
• 1:07:00
  Christmas anymore. And and it was just, I was like,
• 1:07:03
  this is just wrong. Something this is just feels
• 1:07:05
  wrong. And I cried in the bathroom
• 1:07:07
  upstairs because I was like, I got to go like buck up and go
• 1:07:10
  down and put on a happy face because my 3 kids, I have little
• 1:07:13
  kids and my family is, is not a family anymore.
• 1:07:18
  It's just like the same old thing of like you had a family
• 1:07:20
  for a little bit and I don't have a family anymore.
• 1:07:22
  And just like really accepting those lies from the enemy.
• 1:07:26
  We left that night and we went home and we were laying in bed.
• 1:07:29
  And I always tell people like when we lie in bed, we just go
• 1:07:31
  to sleep. Like there's no sitting up
• 1:07:33
  chatting. My husband gets up like 3:00 AM.
• 1:07:35
  So it's like he's out usually. But for some reason this night,
• 1:07:38
  we were up for like 45 minutes just laying there and all of a
• 1:07:43
  sudden these things that my husband had been talking to me
• 1:07:46
  about, he was like, you need to listen to this thing that I was
• 1:07:48
  listening to or, you know, you should listen to this because of
• 1:07:52
  these things being relevant. All of this stuff had like
• 1:07:55
  caught up to me in years of knowing God.
• 1:07:58
  I started to apologetics when I was in high school.
• 1:08:00
  Like it, it was not. I've known how to defend the
• 1:08:03
  Christian faith for a really long time, well before I knew
• 1:08:05
  God. And all of it kind of snapped
• 1:08:09
  together. And like the Holy Spirit, like I
• 1:08:12
  felt God's presence. And that was kind of also like a
• 1:08:17
  light that shined and opened up. And it was like I was laid bare.
• 1:08:21
  And I was like, there's no more excuses.
• 1:08:24
  There's no more justifying my actions.
• 1:08:27
  I was literally ready to wear a head covering anything.
• 1:08:33
  I was like what does the Bible say?
• 1:08:34
  I don't care what my culture says.
• 1:08:35
  I want to know what the Bible says.
• 1:08:36
  Do I need to cover my head during prayer?
• 1:08:38
  Do I need to do like what does it look like to have communion?
• 1:08:42
  What does it look? What are these things look like?
• 1:08:45
  Not according to what this is, because now that also the fear
• 1:08:48
  of God was just put into me that I was like thinking I'm saved
• 1:08:53
  and living essentially just a cultural.
• 1:08:59
  It's not. It was like a cultural religion
• 1:09:01
  that's not Christianity, but it's just called Christianity.
• 1:09:04
  Everything's chaos. You're laying awake and you're
• 1:09:06
  like, I, I can't get this wrong. I don't you're seeing it in a
• 1:09:10
  sense wrong or it feels wrong like you were describing and
• 1:09:14
  you're like, I need to be right with God and and whatever he
• 1:09:17
  wants of me. I need to be 100% all in.
• 1:09:20
  It can't be like going through motions like this has to be 100%
• 1:09:24
  from here on out. Amy is completely dedicated to
• 1:09:27
  whatever God wants. There's no other path.
• 1:09:30
  Yeah, come on, May. I mean, I'd always kind of had
• 1:09:34
  we, we, I, we, my family, we talked about theology.
• 1:09:36
  We talked about it was like everybody I've, they're not
• 1:09:39
  fighting, but it was like debating and all kinds of stuff.
• 1:09:41
  And I always found it really fascinating.
• 1:09:43
  And which is funny because it's this like there's no real fruit
• 1:09:49
  there. But I'd always been more
• 1:09:52
  forthright about like a certain stance, but I don't know, have a
• 1:09:57
  belief to truly back it up. I don't have a faith to back it
• 1:10:00
  up. And whenever God opened my eyes
• 1:10:04
  to this thing, this death walk I was on, He'll also open my eyes
• 1:10:08
  to how many people are on that same thing and just need to be
• 1:10:14
  told you're walking to hell. Like Lord, Lord, we didn't.
• 1:10:20
  We know you and just say no, I didn't.
• 1:10:21
  Yeah. I mean that.
• 1:10:22
  It's a terrifying verse. Yeah.
• 1:10:24
  Oh, absolutely. Also, if you're really super
• 1:10:26
  terrified of that and you're actually trying to live under
• 1:10:29
  the obedience of Christ, you're probably fine.
• 1:10:31
  And people, you should hear that.
• 1:10:33
  I mean not. The fear of God is is.
• 1:10:35
  Like the beginning of wisdom. Is the beginning of wisdom.
• 1:10:37
  And to know that, yeah, the the road to hell is paved with
• 1:10:42
  complacency, you know, lukewarmness, even a good
• 1:10:45
  intention. And then you're just like, yeah,
• 1:10:48
  instead of that radical surrender.
• 1:10:50
  Right. To Jesus and of course we will
• 1:10:52
  make a mistake every single like the like the the life of the
• 1:10:56
  Christians like constantly getting up again and asking for
• 1:10:59
  help and confessing your sins. It's a daily conversion in that
• 1:11:02
  sense, but it has to be the movement of the heart.
• 1:11:06
  Us to say I'm all in. Right, yeah, there's no like
• 1:11:09
  being on the fence to Satan owns the fence.
• 1:11:12
  It's like you got to choose a side.
• 1:11:13
  If you're not choosing a side, you chose Satan.
• 1:11:16
  It's about it's not it's yeah, you had if people who say, well,
• 1:11:22
  I became a Christian, but my life like didn't really look
• 1:11:25
  like. I don't really feel.
• 1:11:26
  Nothing changed. I people do not like when I tell
• 1:11:30
  people like you don't have a saving faith.
• 1:11:33
  I don't know. I can't tell you the amount of
• 1:11:34
  people that tell me who are you to judge someone's salvation.
• 1:11:37
  I'm like, who are you to hear them say something directly
• 1:11:42
  contradictory to what Jesus said and then say you don't have to
• 1:11:44
  participate because you're a Christian and it's not about
• 1:11:49
  you. Your faith isn't personal and it
• 1:11:52
  is in a sense of your relationship with Jesus is
• 1:11:54
  personal, but the Christian life is not.
• 1:11:57
  The Christian life is not just everybody going and doing their
• 1:12:00
  own thing. That is not just somebody that
• 1:12:03
  you share a religion with. You're in a family with that
• 1:12:05
  person and you're called to standards.
• 1:12:07
  That's something that we in America miss.
• 1:12:09
  And it's actually to the detriment of the people around
• 1:12:12
  us and our churches is that we refuse to hold people
• 1:12:15
  accountable. And to not hold someone
• 1:12:17
  accountable to the truth is to reject love for them.
• 1:12:20
  Because if your child is about to put their hand on the stove
• 1:12:24
  and you're like, well, I want them to live by their truth and
• 1:12:27
  I want them to, you know, I guess they just need, I'm not
• 1:12:30
  saying like that they burn their hand, they're probably never
• 1:12:32
  going to do it again. OK, so if a natural consequence
• 1:12:34
  happens, but a good parent will go and say hot, that's hot.
• 1:12:37
  You're going to burn yourself. You're not just going to be
• 1:12:40
  like, let me, they need to figure it out for themselves.
• 1:12:42
  Maybe their experience of heat isn't going to be like my
• 1:12:45
  experience of heat. It's like, you know, it's all.
• 1:12:47
  Morally relativist, right? I mean, the majority of
• 1:12:50
  Americans identify as Christian. The majority, I think it's like
• 1:12:54
  80%. Here's you can maybe look it up.
• 1:12:56
  It's a big percentage, say I'm Christian.
• 1:12:59
  Now, the number that actually go to a weekly service of some
• 1:13:02
  kind, Mass or church or whatever, that number shrinks,
• 1:13:05
  right? And the more you attend church,
• 1:13:07
  the more you start to be morally aligned in your belief at least.
• 1:13:11
  And then behavior kind of tries to catch up.
• 1:13:13
  I'm not always, you know, so like the American church is
• 1:13:15
  constantly struggling with like, are we actually practicing faith
• 1:13:18
  or not? Then there's faith divisions.
• 1:13:20
  I've got Catholics and Protestants and Orthodox and all
• 1:13:23
  of this, which one of my big passions is like, we need to be
• 1:13:25
  under one body because Christians were not meant to be
• 1:13:27
  splendored into 50,000 denominations.
• 1:13:29
  Like that's not God's design. Yeah, everybody didn't get any.
• 1:13:31
  Live with a buffet of truth or something.
• 1:13:33
  Yeah. We're living, we're living
• 1:13:35
  theological and moral buffet. That has been the Christian
• 1:13:39
  path. And there's truth to like true
• 1:13:41
  theological disagreements. Like I'm a Protestant and I love
• 1:13:46
  my Catholic brothers and sisters, but I don't agree on
• 1:13:50
  certain things. And that's where you come
• 1:13:52
  together and you have a true conversation, conversation and
• 1:13:58
  you know what you believe and why you believe it.
• 1:14:00
  But to just be like, well, it's good for you and it's fine
• 1:14:04
  because God had an intention for how he.
• 1:14:07
  Wanted. Yeah, there really.
• 1:14:09
  Is there's not 2 two things, two things that are contradicting
• 1:14:11
  cannot be true at the same time. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:14:14
  And, and ultimately there are going to be things that when
• 1:14:18
  Christ comes back, he's going to be like, and you got this wrong.
• 1:14:21
  There's going to be things that I'm going to stand 10 toes down
• 1:14:23
  on that I'm going to be wrong about.
• 1:14:25
  And everybody is going to experience that.
• 1:14:28
  Everybody is going to experience things that you were not
• 1:14:32
  completely correct about because we live in a flesh, like we live
• 1:14:36
  in a fallen world under the sin of the flesh.
• 1:14:38
  And but at the same time, the response to that shouldn't be so
• 1:14:44
  we don't have to do anything about it or we don't have to
• 1:14:46
  change. That's the response to flaw in
• 1:14:50
  today's culture is like this. It doesn't really matter because
• 1:14:54
  this is who you are, how God made you or you know, you get a
• 1:14:57
  pass because of this or that or it's how you interpret your
• 1:15:00
  relationship with God. And I'll, I do, I tell people
• 1:15:03
  your relationship Christian, your Christian walk is not
• 1:15:06
  personal. It's not just about you.
• 1:15:09
  It it's not God has a bunch of little churches everywhere.
• 1:15:13
  You're a part of a body. You're not the body.
• 1:15:15
  You're part of a body. That's how you're described.
• 1:15:18
  And so you're held accountable to that body.
• 1:15:20
  And if you're sick, you're going to make your, the body sick.
• 1:15:24
  We see that Paul talks about that all the time of like out of
• 1:15:28
  love and out of to maintain the integrity of the church, you
• 1:15:33
  have to cut off the bad parts. And we have refused to do that.
• 1:15:39
  And a lot of times it's not cut off the bad part just to
• 1:15:41
  maintain the integrity of the church.
• 1:15:42
  It's cut off the bad part, so they realize they just got cut
• 1:15:45
  off the body so they can come back onto the body in a healthy
• 1:15:47
  way. I think an element of that, at
• 1:15:50
  least in our in the Catholic Church is excommunication where
• 1:15:53
  you can and mortal sin, like the teaching on sin, which Saint
• 1:15:56
  Paul talks about. Like there are sins that are
• 1:15:58
  like deadly sins. Like these are sins that like
• 1:16:00
  you do them. You're like rejecting salvation.
• 1:16:03
  And then there's little sins like I was impatient.
• 1:16:05
  I was this. And it's like, OK, you're not
• 1:16:06
  like fully with the will fully rejecting salvation, but you're
• 1:16:09
  like falling into the human weakness.
• 1:16:11
  But when you're like, oh, I'm sleeping outside of marriage,
• 1:16:13
  I'm cheating on my spouse, I'm stealing from this person I'm
• 1:16:16
  murdering. Sin.
• 1:16:17
  Yeah, it's not. That's all sin.
• 1:16:19
  That's not. And, and, and those serious,
• 1:16:22
  those more serious things, it's like you are, you are severing
• 1:16:25
  yourself from the body. And that is, you know, the wages
• 1:16:29
  of sin are death like it's called mortal meaning, like this
• 1:16:33
  is a this is a deadly sin. And people can get themselves
• 1:16:36
  all worked up where they they get more accustomed to deadly
• 1:16:40
  sin. And it's not even sin to them
• 1:16:42
  anymore. Yeah.
• 1:16:43
  And that's what we're living in. And now you know, everybody's
• 1:16:46
  heart is going to be different because you might may not fully
• 1:16:49
  know even the sin you're in, especially if you were raised in
• 1:16:52
  it and you didn't really forgiven a teaching on it.
• 1:16:54
  So there's that's where that's where there are so much, there
• 1:16:57
  is so much confusion. It's like people, some people
• 1:16:59
  have a conscience that's more formed than others based on life
• 1:17:04
  circumstances, the inputs. But like you're saying you were
• 1:17:08
  saying earlier, especially once you hit the age of reason and
• 1:17:11
  into adulthood, now you have to take command as best you can and
• 1:17:16
  responsibility for your own formation.
• 1:17:19
  Like no matter what you have struggled with in your life, God
• 1:17:22
  will make a way for you. And our job is to direct make
• 1:17:26
  movements of the soul towards him and towards truth and let he
• 1:17:30
  will guide us and there will be lots of mercy for us, each of us
• 1:17:33
  along the way. So what, what happened?
• 1:17:37
  So after this 2023 moment, you're in your is, this is after
• 1:17:41
  that you got the fire in you. And you're like, OK, I need to
• 1:17:43
  be a better wife. I need a better, better mom.
• 1:17:45
  I need to start creating Christian content.
• 1:17:47
  And preaching what you're doing. It was right after the timeline,
• 1:17:50
  right? You.
• 1:17:52
  Started social media at that point and.
• 1:17:54
  Yep, it was in the beginning of 2024 that because I had like
• 1:17:59
  made meme pages and stuff like I was telling you earlier, and I
• 1:18:04
  shared part of my story with my parents.
• 1:18:07
  And while that's a really big part of my foundation for why I
• 1:18:11
  do things and like it is my testimony is a way that I can
• 1:18:17
  connect to other people to speak the truth of the love of God.
• 1:18:21
  Like for me, it's all in on Christ.
• 1:18:25
  While that's a really big part of what fuels my desire to see
• 1:18:29
  the humanization of the unborn, of the homeless, of the poor, of
• 1:18:35
  those who are the lesser in our society and we have them in our
• 1:18:39
  society. Whether we want to act like
• 1:18:41
  that's not there, there is levels of respect that we allow
• 1:18:45
  certain people to have that we don't allow other people to
• 1:18:47
  have. So while it fuels that for me,
• 1:18:51
  I'm all in on Christ and speaking the truth of Christ and
• 1:18:58
  I have kind of a deadpan way of doing it and I.
• 1:19:01
  It's great. I try try to also my husband's
• 1:19:05
  like, you know, kind of soften the blow like you got to kind of
• 1:19:08
  and so I do try. But I realized that because of
• 1:19:12
  all of this trauma that I had had, there was this formation of
• 1:19:15
  having to articulate exactly what I'm thinking.
• 1:19:18
  But reading to people I have. But reading people?
• 1:19:22
  Reading. How people are responding.
• 1:19:24
  But also what's going to make sense to you?
• 1:19:27
  I don't it's a God thing, but I can just know how you're going
• 1:19:32
  to understand what I'm going to need to tell you.
• 1:19:35
  And I have a ability to project that and how I connect with
• 1:19:41
  people. And because of that, God has put
• 1:19:46
  into my path certain things that I talk about, and it comes in
• 1:19:50
  seasons. And there's different things
• 1:19:52
  that I talk about. Right now.
• 1:19:54
  I'm more in a season of like, as Christians, we have to stand in
• 1:19:57
  the truth. And we're in a war, We're in a
• 1:20:00
  spiritual war. There's a sense of urgency that
• 1:20:03
  has really awakened people. And even before what happened
• 1:20:07
  with Charlie, there was a stirring of the spirit and.
• 1:20:14
  The Christian community, a lot of people started kind of
• 1:20:18
  feeling like this was. Feeling it.
• 1:20:20
  And I'm like, I mean, worse than abounds.
• 1:20:23
  Grace abounds more. But it's this sense of urgency.
• 1:20:27
  I think there's an urgency. I feel it.
• 1:20:29
  I think a lot of people are feeling it.
• 1:20:31
  We're like we can't, we can't keep doing this like we have to
• 1:20:36
  live differently, right? Not in some harsh or cruel or,
• 1:20:40
  you know, mean way it quite the exact opposite.
• 1:20:43
  We have to live with complete abandonment to the will of God
• 1:20:47
  and with courage and love. I mean, that's the moment.
• 1:20:51
  And if you don't do it, you're missing out on your own life, as
• 1:20:53
  well as an opportunity to help other souls.
• 1:20:56
  Yeah, absolutely. And there's also this like this
• 1:21:00
  false sense of security that so many people have.
• 1:21:03
  I can follow God however I need to, and that's going to be
• 1:21:07
  enough. And people have neglected the
• 1:21:10
  Lord and the benefits of living in obedience to the Lord in
• 1:21:15
  exchange for this. Like counterfeit Satan does not
• 1:21:19
  go, and I mean, he does go up and make completely new
• 1:21:22
  religions. But one of the best ways to get
• 1:21:24
  the real threat off of the battlefield is to make them have
• 1:21:27
  a false sense of security and to give them a counterfeit 99%
• 1:21:32
  truth and a 1% lie. Yeah, that 1% lie kills you.
• 1:21:36
  It's not, it's not like the 1% the is the is the yeast, it
• 1:21:42
  ruins the whole batch. So it it's a completely false
• 1:21:47
  gospel that's gone out and with revival and like the revival
• 1:21:51
  that we're seeing of people realizing like what we're
• 1:21:53
  talking about earlier, the only truth is God.
• 1:21:56
  Even in the conservative movement, people call me like
• 1:21:59
  MAGA all the time. I'm like I think you've got me
• 1:22:02
  and pen wrong are. You MAGA.
• 1:22:04
  No, you don't. Strike me as MAGA no.
• 1:22:07
  People get really mad at when I'm honest about Trump.
• 1:22:09
  OK, but. You have you called?
• 1:22:12
  Have you called Trump out? Oh, absolutely.
• 1:22:14
  But I was just saying there's this like false gospel and
• 1:22:17
  everybody even at the conservative movement or like
• 1:22:19
  what you were saying, everybody calls himself a Christian.
• 1:22:21
  It's like you may have conservative ideals, but you've
• 1:22:25
  still fallen for the religion that mimics Christianity.
• 1:22:30
  What do you think is the biggest mistake of people who are kind
• 1:22:35
  of conservativism is becoming their religion in your opinion?
• 1:22:39
  I well, number one, it gives like a false sense of moral
• 1:22:42
  superiority. Your morals if they didn't come
• 1:22:45
  from God or filthy rags. So while I will say that there
• 1:22:49
  is a certain amount of preservation that you benefit
• 1:22:52
  from from having the law, obeying the law that God wrote.
• 1:22:56
  Like I'm more righteous than those, you know, people who are
• 1:22:58
  transgender or whatever their concern.
• 1:23:00
  And again, I'm not trying to like accuse every conservative
• 1:23:05
  because if I, if you, if I had to pick on a on a box, are you
• 1:23:07
  moderate, rebel or conservative? Of course I check conservative.
• 1:23:11
  But it's I think what you're speaking to is, especially in
• 1:23:14
  the social media world, the tendency to that moral
• 1:23:17
  superiority in that tone of like, I am better than you and
• 1:23:22
  I, you know, we aren't better than anyone.
• 1:23:24
  No, not at all. Yeah.
• 1:23:26
  And we actually are less than because we've been given so much
• 1:23:30
  grace. So we should actually be doing
• 1:23:32
  more than that person out there that we're trying to talk to
• 1:23:34
  because. We have the great truth.
• 1:23:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say that that is a big a
• 1:23:40
  big issue is like if you're the source is what matters, not not
• 1:23:45
  necessarily the outcome. Kind of like what I was telling
• 1:23:47
  you before is like I'm putting my own fruit on my tree and I
• 1:23:50
  was like, look at this thing that I've done, but the true
• 1:23:52
  fruit of the spirit comes from the spirit.
• 1:23:56
  If you have, you've got a counterfeit if you look like the
• 1:24:00
  spirit without having the spirit.
• 1:24:02
  The the fruits of the spirit I have like the poster here in the
• 1:24:06
  office, but I just look at them and it's like they are so
• 1:24:11
  different than a lot of what is characterizing most of politics
• 1:24:15
  on both sides. But you know, Lovejoy, peace,
• 1:24:21
  patience, like are we ever patient anymore with one
• 1:24:24
  another? Kindness, goodness,
• 1:24:27
  faithfulness. This is a big one.
• 1:24:30
  Gentleness I. Know I struggle with that one.
• 1:24:32
  Me too, I mean especially when I'm impatient with my kids.
• 1:24:35
  I'm like and then the other one's self-control.
• 1:24:38
  That is, I think, one of the we justify a lack of self-control
• 1:24:44
  because we say that is for a good reason.
• 1:24:46
  It's like you're like, it's a good cause.
• 1:24:50
  Like, well, I may have lost self-control, but I was
• 1:24:52
  righteously. Anger.
• 1:24:53
  My indignation, Yeah. Very.
• 1:24:55
  Little. But did you really?
• 1:24:58
  Yeah. Yeah, very few times when
• 1:25:00
  somebody is getting that righteous anger out on the
• 1:25:03
  Internet, is it actually righteous.
• 1:25:05
  And I'm saying that because I'm guilty and not because I'm like
• 1:25:08
  shaking my finger at anybody, but are we going to be honest
• 1:25:11
  with ourself? A lot of times it's not about
• 1:25:14
  like being honest with yourself 1st And I know like if you get
• 1:25:19
  really defensive about something, it's probably because
• 1:25:21
  you have a problem with it. And I know that from experience
• 1:25:24
  every single day and being online is like ruthless, but it
• 1:25:28
  is. It has also inserted this echo
• 1:25:32
  chamber on both sides that it's like, well, this side's better
• 1:25:38
  than this side because of like they have the same ideals is US.
• 1:25:43
  And it's like, well, they get that from the law.
• 1:25:45
  And so they're benefiting from Christianity.
• 1:25:46
  Conservatism is benefiting from Christianity, but it isn't the
• 1:25:52
  Christian movement. And if you settle for that,
• 1:25:55
  you're settling for much less than what God has to offer you.
• 1:25:59
  And you're actually doing yourself and everybody around
• 1:26:02
  you a disservice by doing that. And I'd push back on Trump
• 1:26:04
  because my entire, not my platform is, it's not mine, but
• 1:26:12
  the entire thing that I stand on is the truth.
• 1:26:17
  Because without the truth, you have, you have nothing, OK?
• 1:26:23
  Nothing is worth compromising on the truth.
• 1:26:25
  The truth is Jesus. You don't get truth without
• 1:26:28
  Jesus. But when you stand on that,
• 1:26:33
  every but everything, it applies to everybody.
• 1:26:35
  You don't get an exemption. And as Christians, we give
• 1:26:39
  exemptions to certain things and certain people.
• 1:26:42
  On our side. On our side, yeah.
• 1:26:44
  And it's despicable in the eyes of God.
• 1:26:46
  And it also discredits us in the eyes of.
• 1:26:48
  Unbelievable. Now I think it's another thing
• 1:26:49
  to be like, well, no politician is perfect.
• 1:26:51
  I'm not voting for a pastor and voting for a politician, la Dee
• 1:26:54
  da. And it's like, OK, to some
• 1:26:56
  degree, yes. But I believe character does
• 1:26:57
  matter in the higher office. Yeah, of.
• 1:26:59
  Course, a leader should have character.
• 1:27:01
  What are what are we doing? They're the person that holds
• 1:27:04
  the that God instructs in Romans 1312.
• 1:27:11
  I'm liking on it now, but where he he literally has instructed
• 1:27:14
  them and placed them there. You think that their character
• 1:27:16
  doesn't matter to God? That's.
• 1:27:18
  Well, in the church you just he describes the bishops and the
• 1:27:21
  deacons to to specifically have like really extraordinary
• 1:27:25
  character, like extra character. Oh yeah, that's for the that's
• 1:27:29
  for the prelateur of the church. So it's a little different than
• 1:27:31
  the political realm, but I mean, we could get into so much.
• 1:27:35
  And also it was like, I was like, we got to have you backing
• 1:27:37
  me and talk theology too, Catholic, Protestant stuff.
• 1:27:39
  There's so much I wanted. I really wanted to ask you,
• 1:27:42
  though, about the pro-life issue, because your story, the
• 1:27:47
  struggles that you have experienced in foster care, and
• 1:27:50
  not every foster care kid has been through what you've been
• 1:27:52
  through, right? Some have had it a lot better.
• 1:27:54
  And yeah, I'm sure some have had it worse, right?
• 1:27:57
  But I think you're on the more bad side, would you say?
• 1:28:00
  Yeah, I've definitely heard some horror stories.
• 1:28:02
  Yeah. So I think.
• 1:28:04
  Where would you place yourself in the realm of kids in foster
• 1:28:06
  care in terms of really great outcomes, really great family
• 1:28:09
  placements versus like the worst, the family was abusing
• 1:28:13
  them? Yeah, like on a scale of one.
• 1:28:15
  Yeah, like 10 being like you got by nearly unscathed and like 1
• 1:28:19
  is like the most horrific thing ever happened.
• 1:28:22
  I'd probably say like a 5.5 you are for 4.5 on the lesser
• 1:28:29
  because not every single child that goes into foster care is
• 1:28:32
  going to experience horrific things.
• 1:28:34
  So. You're saying most children it's
• 1:28:36
  like, it's not great, but it's not horrible.
• 1:28:39
  Yeah, because you're going to see kids that go back home.
• 1:28:41
  Yeah. You're going to see kids that
• 1:28:43
  end up in families that they're biologically related to.
• 1:28:48
  You're going to see families that adopt A child and they
• 1:28:52
  would got by nearly unscathed and not completely, but not
• 1:28:56
  every child that goes into foster care.
• 1:28:58
  A vast majority of the foster parents are in there because
• 1:29:01
  they do. It's not just for a paycheck.
• 1:29:03
  It really isn't. I think that's a horrible stigma
• 1:29:05
  so many people give. They really have a desire and
• 1:29:09
  maybe they had rose colored glasses when they went in, but
• 1:29:11
  they grit their teeth and they stick it out and they really are
• 1:29:15
  trying to provide the best stable environment and loving
• 1:29:17
  environment for these children. And so a lot of them go into
• 1:29:20
  that. Now.
• 1:29:20
  Our people who work the system are overworked and they're
• 1:29:26
  spread thin. What does that mean work the
• 1:29:28
  system? Like that that keep the system
• 1:29:31
  going like your caseworkers and your managers and the transport
• 1:29:35
  people and do you think? We don't invest enough in it as
• 1:29:38
  a, as a like, if you were the Queen of America or the
• 1:29:40
  president of America, you're the president of America and you're
• 1:29:43
  like, hey, Amy, fix the adoption and foster care system.
• 1:29:47
  Just fix it. What would you do?
• 1:29:49
  I don't think that it's about pumping a bunch of money into
• 1:29:51
  it. I think it's about the structure
• 1:29:54
  and I also think that it's about having the child in mind at 1st
• 1:29:58
  and not just the family, because I think I see a lot of
• 1:30:01
  sacrificing the child on the altar of reunification, dragging
• 1:30:06
  a child out. I've seen children in foster
• 1:30:08
  care for seven years trying to reunify.
• 1:30:11
  I've seen parents who should never have been allowed to
• 1:30:14
  retain the the rights of their child.
• 1:30:16
  My own family member being affected by this.
• 1:30:19
  That child went back into the home and they were abused in the
• 1:30:22
  home and time after time after time these parents were given
• 1:30:28
  over and over opportunities when they put the parents best
• 1:30:33
  interest over the child. So if that would be one thing I
• 1:30:36
  would fix is. How do we fix that?
• 1:30:39
  I think that it's about having less leniency.
• 1:30:42
  Like you, you. You abuse your kid.
• 1:30:44
  You're done. Like, well, it just depends.
• 1:30:47
  And by abuse, I mean like, significantly abuse like it.
• 1:30:52
  It passes the threshold of like illegal.
• 1:30:55
  Knowingly and intentionally inflict harm on your child.
• 1:30:58
  You are not a safe parent. So you lose your custody rights.
• 1:31:03
  I would say yes, because nine times out of 10, when they go
• 1:31:06
  back, they experience it again and then they slip through the
• 1:31:09
  cracks. Kids die every way too much from
• 1:31:16
  going back to a home they should have never been placed back in.
• 1:31:19
  There's so much leniency. And then the second thing is to
• 1:31:23
  have more caseworkers. The caseworker load for children
• 1:31:27
  versus caseworker is exponentially high.
• 1:31:29
  You mean they have like dozens and dozens of kids each?
• 1:31:32
  Person I mean like no, but that doesn't mean like these these
• 1:31:36
  people are running around seven days a week.
• 1:31:38
  They don't. It's like what you get Monday
• 1:31:40
  through Friday and you're on call every other no, you get a
• 1:31:43
  call in the middle of the night because somebody's trying to
• 1:31:46
  call you because your child, that child is the caseworker's
• 1:31:49
  child too. They may not be parenting them,
• 1:31:51
  but that's their responsibility and.
• 1:31:55
  They're being abused at 3:00 AM and so you need.
• 1:31:57
  To go having a total meltdown and the police are called or
• 1:32:01
  they ran away, or the foster parents or, or the birth parents
• 1:32:05
  are knocking on my front door because they found out where I
• 1:32:07
  lived and they're demanding to see their child.
• 1:32:09
  Like these are things that the caseworkers are having to deal
• 1:32:13
  with. And I know people will say,
• 1:32:14
  well, they signed up for it, you know, you knew.
• 1:32:16
  But the system's already putting everybody involved at a
• 1:32:19
  disadvantage. It's not just money.
• 1:32:21
  It's the entire structure. And it's the court systems, too.
• 1:32:24
  It's like get struck out and a lot of things could be handled.
• 1:32:30
  I have heard this from other foster parents, not as much from
• 1:32:34
  foster kids because I feel like I guess I've talked to more
• 1:32:38
  parents than the children. A lot of the children that I
• 1:32:40
  know are still children. They're not like out of the
• 1:32:41
  system like you and now have your own family.
• 1:32:45
  But I hear this a lot from foster parents and adoptive
• 1:32:47
  parents where they say it's always about the parent, not the
• 1:32:53
  foster parent, but the biological parent to the
• 1:32:55
  detriment of the child. Yep, and even like visitations
• 1:32:59
  and things like that or in custody disputes too.
• 1:33:02
  I hear like with abuse allegations like it's less about
• 1:33:05
  is a child being abused and more about the parent.
• 1:33:07
  You know, the dad as an example has the right to the child and
• 1:33:11
  unless abuse can be proven, the dad should have this
• 1:33:14
  opportunity. It does get scary though because
• 1:33:17
  like what about false allegations?
• 1:33:19
  What about the state overstepping?
• 1:33:21
  You know which. Does happen.
• 1:33:23
  It absolutely happens, and there's a certain level of
• 1:33:27
  discernment that you almost can't breathe into this
• 1:33:30
  structure of the system because you can't make everybody have
• 1:33:34
  discernment. But I think that there's
• 1:33:36
  parameters in place that aren't in place.
• 1:33:39
  That are not in place. No.
• 1:33:41
  And I would say too that the Foster systems have a lot of
• 1:33:46
  federal funding and so why is it not being allocated properly?
• 1:33:50
  I would say that that needs there needs, there would need to
• 1:33:53
  be a restructuring of that because it's not that the
• 1:33:57
  state's broke, it's what is the state spending his money on?
• 1:34:00
  What is the state? Spending his money on.
• 1:34:01
  Yeah. And there's a lot of incentive.
• 1:34:04
  I think that there's a lot of incentive to have a broken
• 1:34:07
  system because it makes people a lot more money and.
• 1:34:10
  What does that mean? Meaning, who's making the money?
• 1:34:13
  Well, if you. Look at certain cities that I
• 1:34:15
  won't name names of. They have a really bad homeless
• 1:34:18
  homelessness issue, right? And they get millions.
• 1:34:21
  Of dollars and people get rich and people still sleep on the
• 1:34:25
  street and you can't go in when you like you can't just pump a
• 1:34:28
  bunch of money into people that are homeless like it's a it's a
• 1:34:31
  foundational issue with them. So I'm not out here like
• 1:34:33
  claiming that I have the the amazing answer of what's going
• 1:34:37
  to heal homelessness, but I know it's definitely not people with
• 1:34:41
  $500,000 salaries on a board of 10 people, a board of 10 people
• 1:34:46
  making like so much money. Sorry, I'm like losing my words.
• 1:34:50
  It makes me so angry, but when you see people get rich off of
• 1:34:57
  that system, you've now created a monster.
• 1:35:00
  Are you talking? About pensions too, or are you
• 1:35:03
  talking about just like nonprofits or what's the.
• 1:35:05
  Oh yeah, nonprofits is is money is.
• 1:35:07
  Most nonprofits is just money laundering.
• 1:35:11
  Like it's just washing money to go directly into the pocket.
• 1:35:13
  I remember Gavin Newsom. Again, I don't want to Get the
• 1:35:16
  facts wrong, but, and I don't want to say it was Gavin Newsom,
• 1:35:19
  it was a mayor of San Francisco and they're like, we're going to
• 1:35:22
  solve homeless business. So we need, you know, I don't
• 1:35:24
  know, $500 million or something. And then like they spent $500
• 1:35:27
  million. And it got worse.
• 1:35:28
  And there was like no solution to homelessness.
• 1:35:30
  And so everyone was like, where did this money go?
• 1:35:33
  And I'm sure it went to a lot of salaries, but I think it also
• 1:35:35
  went to things like, you know, clean needle funds and like all
• 1:35:40
  of these like. Things.
• 1:35:41
  Propagate programs that ultimately, yeah, propagated the
• 1:35:44
  issue. So I mean, I'm sure there's a
• 1:35:49
  lot to unpack there, but it's like how, how does one, how does
• 1:35:52
  1 unpack that? It's a total shift of the entire
• 1:35:56
  system because the system is flawed.
• 1:36:00
  And I won't say too a lot of people that participate in the
• 1:36:03
  system have really good intentions and they start off
• 1:36:06
  really wanting to help people. And a lot of people stay with a
• 1:36:09
  desire to see families succeed. Who doesn't want that?
• 1:36:13
  I mean, if you really think of, I mean, there are people out
• 1:36:15
  there who really don't care. They act like they care or they
• 1:36:18
  just act like they don't care. But most people have a desire to
• 1:36:22
  see children succeed, families reunited, people off the street,
• 1:36:28
  people not having to sleep in the homeless shelter with their
• 1:36:30
  seven-year old. People really want to see that.
• 1:36:33
  And the people that I see doing that in my community is the
• 1:36:37
  church. It's really not.
• 1:36:39
  Not even the government. It's not the government, it's
• 1:36:42
  about the church stepping up and doing that, not just out of
• 1:36:48
  obligation, because you have an obligation to do it, but out of
• 1:36:53
  a desire to honor the Lord and humanize people.
• 1:36:56
  And you're just really not going to get that when you have a
• 1:36:59
  system that makes people money off of the problem.
• 1:37:05
  And it's really hard to be like, and this is what I would do to
• 1:37:09
  fix it because you can't just go fire a bunch of people or be
• 1:37:12
  like, pull the. Funding If you were the if you
• 1:37:13
  were the boss, maybe you could, but I.
• 1:37:16
  Don't think my nerves could take that.
• 1:37:18
  What do you say, Amy, to people? And this is the incessant
• 1:37:23
  example used by people who support abortion, who say, look,
• 1:37:28
  it is a really rough system, you know, single moms struggling
• 1:37:34
  foster care. If we, I was actually just doing
• 1:37:38
  a debate last night at Yale and they were saying, you know, I
• 1:37:42
  don't remember if she was saying this before the debate or
• 1:37:44
  during. But my opponent was talking
• 1:37:46
  about how, you know, there's all of these families that are, or,
• 1:37:51
  you know, people that are really low income and they don't have
• 1:37:55
  any resources and there's addiction and da, da, da, da.
• 1:37:58
  And you're going to just, you're just going to have them all have
• 1:38:01
  three thousands more children a day.
• 1:38:04
  You know, like if we end, you know, ban abortion, there's 3000
• 1:38:07
  abortions a day. That's 3000 more children born a
• 1:38:09
  day. And many of them may be born to
• 1:38:10
  these struggling families or individuals.
• 1:38:13
  Right. Yeah, I don't.
• 1:38:16
  The whole premise of that is false compassion.
• 1:38:19
  I care so much about these people.
• 1:38:22
  We should let them kill their children.
• 1:38:25
  I'm sure that would make that woman recoil.
• 1:38:27
  But no, that's not what I'm saying.
• 1:38:28
  But it is what you're saying, actually.
• 1:38:30
  And I know that that isn't the politically correct thing to do,
• 1:38:35
  to call someone on their false compassion, but that's what it
• 1:38:38
  is. What you're telling people who
• 1:38:41
  are in the foster care system is if I were to love you, how like
• 1:38:47
  I think you deserve to be loved. I would have killed you before
• 1:38:50
  you were born so you never had to experience this.
• 1:38:52
  Instead of allowing you to see hope.
• 1:38:55
  I would have taken your life before because I'm so
• 1:38:57
  compassionate. But you hear that you're like,
• 1:38:59
  that's OK. That's not compassion.
• 1:39:02
  And people would say that you're framing them incorrectly, that
• 1:39:04
  you're mischaracterizing, mischaracterizing them, but
• 1:39:07
  you're not. You're not mischaracterizing
• 1:39:10
  somebody. People really think that they
• 1:39:13
  can out love God, that they can out love the logical love that
• 1:39:19
  exists and they can out compassion.
• 1:39:21
  Everybody and their Band-Aid solution is to get rid of the
• 1:39:24
  problem, because we don't. Have them being the person.
• 1:39:28
  Yeah. No, not the person, the system.
• 1:39:31
  So I don't even think when they say that.
• 1:39:36
  I think a lot of times they do treat the person like the
• 1:39:39
  problem, but even their excuse of saying it's not the person
• 1:39:44
  because it's not a person yet, but it's actually the system
• 1:39:47
  that's the problem. There's nothing we can do here
• 1:39:49
  that is treating it. That's what they're treating as
• 1:39:54
  the problem. But there's a solution to that.
• 1:39:57
  And even a system being flawed does not justify the killing of
• 1:40:02
  people, because by using that it would be like saying.
• 1:40:06
  Instead of people being homeless, it would have been
• 1:40:08
  better for them to be born but never been born.
• 1:40:10
  If people have been raped in their life, it would have been
• 1:40:13
  better for them to never be born out of their mother's womb.
• 1:40:16
  If somebody went hungry, it would have been better for you
• 1:40:20
  to have never been born. At what level of suffering do
• 1:40:24
  you say it's OK for you to not be alive?
• 1:40:28
  What level is arbitrary? Which means that it's a flawed
• 1:40:31
  argument. It it means that you have said
• 1:40:35
  that someone's worth and value in their life is predicated on
• 1:40:39
  something that you get to determine.
• 1:40:42
  But we all live by one law, so if everybody gets to decide it,
• 1:40:47
  you can make no law about it ever.
• 1:40:49
  Which means you could kill anybody.
• 1:40:51
  It really is like that. We have morality written on us
• 1:40:55
  because it's a direct reflection of our Creator.
• 1:40:59
  They have to play by those rules, actually.
• 1:41:02
  Even if they don't acknowledge God, they still live with the
• 1:41:05
  reflection of God in them. They can't help it.
• 1:41:08
  So when you go, when you say those things, I also like to
• 1:41:13
  remind people, you know, that there are kids in foster care
• 1:41:16
  who have already been told you're not important enough to
• 1:41:19
  give up drugs for. You're not important enough to
• 1:41:22
  get rid of the boyfriend that is sexually abusing you.
• 1:41:25
  You're not important enough to stop beating when you make me
• 1:41:31
  mad. You're not important enough for
• 1:41:32
  any of those things. And then from the world, they
• 1:41:35
  say, I'm so compassionate. I would have been, it would have
• 1:41:38
  been better if you would have never been born.
• 1:41:40
  So I'm going to make sure anybody that's like you doesn't
• 1:41:45
  have to be because their mom doesn't want them or their mom
• 1:41:48
  doesn't want them to have to have as terrible as life as you.
• 1:41:52
  It's it's really one of the most despicable things that you can
• 1:41:57
  do to use the life of a child already upended in turmoil to
• 1:42:03
  justify killing another child. There's no way around it.
• 1:42:10
  How does that make you feel personally, having been in
• 1:42:13
  foster care for so many years yourself, when you see those
• 1:42:15
  people making those arguments for abortion?
• 1:42:18
  I have complete validation in the Lord, like I know where my
• 1:42:23
  words comes from. I know that I'm loved.
• 1:42:26
  I know that even if anything were to ever happen, like all of
• 1:42:31
  my family, through Christ and the body of Christ, I will
• 1:42:34
  experience love from other people.
• 1:42:37
  And even if I don't experience it from people, I experience it
• 1:42:39
  from Christ. I have value.
• 1:42:41
  So for me it doesn't anger me, but it does anger me for others
• 1:42:48
  who hear that. And it just, it, it, it makes me
• 1:42:56
  so angry because it's so self-righteous.
• 1:43:03
  You're so self-righteous. And I struggled to have pity for
• 1:43:09
  people that think like that, just like I would struggle to
• 1:43:14
  have pity for people who put millions of Jews in gas
• 1:43:19
  chambers. Because to dehumanize someone
• 1:43:23
  based on what you think is a life worth living is one of the
• 1:43:29
  most despicable things you can do.
• 1:43:32
  You don't get to decide this life is an acceptable life.
• 1:43:39
  It's like what we were talking about earlier, how society
• 1:43:42
  sometimes refuses to acknowledge everybody says, well, we need to
• 1:43:45
  care for the homeless, we need to care for that.
• 1:43:47
  But we refuse to acknowledge that there are certain people in
• 1:43:50
  societal classes that get more dignity, get more of our
• 1:43:55
  respect, more of our attention than other people.
• 1:43:59
  And it's that same idea that bleeds into it is the
• 1:44:02
  dehumanization when you characterize people like that.
• 1:44:05
  And I'm not saying like you need to have immense respect for
• 1:44:08
  somebody who's an active serial killer or something like that.
• 1:44:11
  But just status, whether it comes from your wealth or the
• 1:44:18
  family that you're born into or the mythical capacities that you
• 1:44:22
  have, your physical attributes, whether society thinks you're
• 1:44:27
  pretty, whether you have a certain scale weight on the
• 1:44:30
  scale, all of these external things, those don't determine
• 1:44:35
  your value in life. And when we say certain people
• 1:44:41
  can't have can't have access to life because it will infringe on
• 1:44:46
  someone else or because we don't think that that's a life worth
• 1:44:50
  living of a bet, be better to just not let you live at all.
• 1:44:54
  You've created this horrific world that puts people in
• 1:44:58
  different categories worthy of life.
• 1:45:00
  And didn't you go and say you're the most compassionate, you're
• 1:45:05
  the most pro woman? You are you pro foster child
• 1:45:09
  woman? Like which ones?
• 1:45:11
  Because you've actually exposed yourself to be a person who
• 1:45:19
  dehumanizes other living people because you're not just
• 1:45:22
  dehumanizing the child that's unborn, you're dehumanizing
• 1:45:26
  everybody with that life that you said isn't worth it.
• 1:45:30
  That's a lot of people. A lot of people.
• 1:45:33
  There are a lot of people that are hungry that you just
• 1:45:35
  dehumanize. There are a lot of people that
• 1:45:37
  experience sexual abuse in their childhood, in their adulthood.
• 1:45:41
  And you saying you're part of the Me Too movement, you're
• 1:45:45
  dehumanizing all of these people and calling it compassion.
• 1:45:50
  It's just such a sleight of hand.
• 1:45:52
  It has Satan's, has Satan all over it.
• 1:45:56
  Thanks for speaking out about it so well, I mean, that's I do
• 1:46:00
  think I was like everyone needs to listen to Amy on this topic
• 1:46:03
  because like Amy has the experience herself and and the
• 1:46:07
  words to explain it for people, because that is one of the
• 1:46:11
  biggest lies that I see. And it's like everyday almost
• 1:46:14
  you see that lie about how abortions healthcare, because
• 1:46:18
  abortions good or compassionate because you're preventing
• 1:46:21
  suffering in the future. And I just look at your life and
• 1:46:28
  you know, your marriage, your children, your faith, and now
• 1:46:31
  your work. And it's so beautiful and it's
• 1:46:33
  so good. And you know, I know you
• 1:46:36
  obviously credit the grace of God, but it is an inspiration.
• 1:46:40
  And I think that's one of the reasons your content and your
• 1:46:43
  mission is just growing quickly. And I love to see that and I'm
• 1:46:47
  so excited for that. And I hope everybody listening
• 1:46:49
  to the show follows Amy because it's an you are an inspiration.
• 1:46:54
  Thank you for saying that. That means a lot.
• 1:46:56
  That's really encouraging. I get messages from people and I
• 1:46:59
  try to read them all. I'm not I it gets to be a lot
• 1:47:02
  sometimes, but telling somebody that you're encouraged by them,
• 1:47:07
  it goes a long ways. Like tell the people in your
• 1:47:10
  life that they're encouraging you because it's good to
• 1:47:17
  acknowledge that and somebody else.
• 1:47:19
  And it reminds them, and it stirs the spirit again to keep
• 1:47:22
  going because we're in a battle right now against powers and
• 1:47:27
  principalities, and we're in a war against Satan.
• 1:47:31
  And I think sometimes we kind of fall asleep on the battlefield.
• 1:47:36
  But you know, I always tell. People like.
• 1:47:38
  You know, but some people say, well, I don't, I don't have like
• 1:47:42
  a testimony. My testimony is not as
• 1:47:45
  interesting. Like I grew up, both my parents
• 1:47:47
  were married and this and that. It's like you're the ultimate,
• 1:47:50
  one of the ultimate examples of like what you want for somebody.
• 1:47:55
  What? You want.
• 1:47:57
  Yeah, sharing the goodness. Yeah.
• 1:47:59
  So it's like nobody has a boring testimony.
• 1:48:00
  Everybody has something and I would never be like, I hope you
• 1:48:04
  have the most. I'm never going to tell my
• 1:48:05
  children. I hope they have an interesting.
• 1:48:06
  I want their testimony to be boring, like please let it be
• 1:48:09
  boring, but it's encouraging. We're all fighting in this
• 1:48:13
  battle against evil. And whenever the ashes of my
• 1:48:20
  life and my childhood God uses to build other people up.
• 1:48:24
  It's just like the biggest, like smack in the face to the enemy,
• 1:48:30
  I feel was like you can't do any damage to the children of God
• 1:48:35
  because God will ultimately redeem them.
• 1:48:37
  So thank you for saying that because it was very, it's very
• 1:48:40
  encouraging to hear that. Amen.
• 1:48:43
  Thank you, Amy for doing this podcast.
• 1:48:45
  We're filming at night. By the way.
• 1:48:47
  Amy is a super trooper. At the beginning it's like I.
• 1:48:51
  Don't know how late it is right now.
• 1:48:52
  I don't want to talk, but you are crushing it.
• 1:48:55
  Amy. Thank you.
• 1:48:56
  Where can people find you in your work?
• 1:48:58
  I am on Instagram and on Facebook and I'm going to try to
• 1:49:01
  get back to doing more long form content on YouTube.
• 1:49:04
  And it's Amy with two YS because somebody took my handle.
• 1:49:08
  Amy 2 YS Main. We'll link it too.
• 1:49:12
  OK. Thank you, Amy, come back again.
• 1:49:14
  Let's do it again. Thank you.
• 1:49:15
  So theology next time we'll do theology.
• 1:49:17
  Well, that'll be its own episode.
• 1:49:18
  I know this is beautiful. Thank you so much.
• 1:49:21
  Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for listening
• 1:49:23
  to this episode of The Lila Roe Show with Amy Mayne.
• 1:49:26
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• 1:49:28
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• 1:49:30
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• 1:49:41
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• 1:49:44
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• 1:49:47
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