Meeting People Where They Are - A Conversation with Mashaun Hirschler, Mission Leader of T.H.U.G.G.I.N for Christ

Thanks for tuning into this week’s podcast. In this episode, we’ll hear from Mashaun Hirschler, Mission Leader of T.H.U.G.G.I.N for Christ - a ministry that is aimed at serving those who are stuck on the streets. While mindful of the complicated psychological and sociological factors that contribute to addiction and homelessness, they seek to address the 'whole person' in Jesus’ Name. 

You will hear some of Mashaun’s story, and his radical transformation because of Jesus. He was called out of the street, and now has been called back to serve those who are still trapped. He also shares some invaluable wisdom about modeling the way of Jesus by meeting and loving people where they are at, no matter what their situation may look like. 

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Transcript

Gabrielle Leonard: 0:00

Welcome to the return to joy podcast. I'm your host, Gabrielle Michel Leonard. Here we're leading people to cultivate joy through storytelling. We hope listening will reveal pathways to unlocking the healing power of connection so that you can see your relationships and the world around you transformed from fractured into flourishing. What's up Beloved's? I am super excited for us to dive right into this episode because I got my brother here was Shawn Hirsch. Muller will say what's up, man, Shawn, what's up? What's up? He runs the ministry called Thuggin for Christ and I'ma leave it to him to share more about like what ducting for Christ is but what I how I will introduce him is I'll say that LaShawn is married to a beautiful woman who I love named brandy. He's got three boys. He is ex everything. In his words. He is ex everything ex gangbanger, ex prisoner, ex drug dealer, ex womanizer, all things that would disqualify him to being a minister of the gospel. But God, but the good news that Christ proclaims, I can't wait for y'all to hear his story. Miss Shawn, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Your story. And also the work of your ministry is such an encouragement. But please tell us about what is studying for Christ. What does it stand for? And why is that the name that you gave the ministry that you started?

Mashaun Hirschler: 1:38

Well, first off, the reason why is the name when I came to Christ, me and my wife was driving one day. And I just left the dope house for praying for some people in there. And everybody put down their the needles, their pipes, just to come and circle up in the in the house to print. And we'll drive on my wife and I'm like, Hey, man, we need to call this something like this has to have a name. And the first thing that came to my mind was dug in for credits because I've always been a thug my whole life, right? Everybody told me I was a duck. I used to proclaim that over my life like man, I'm always going to be a duck, no matter what, I'm always going to be a duck. And so I'm like man Duggan for Christ like, Man, I could do that. Right? Like the same way I was in the streets, and going hard for for saying, then I can go just as hard for Christ and put my foot on Satan's neck. Right? And so saying, Here's my outline. So every day I step in to the streets, man, I'm trying to renounce all the demon spirits everything and make Satan mad. So tagging came up. And then my wife, she's so good with words. She came up with the acronym real quick. And she liked when Mandy honest understanding and then she gave up like a couple of different versions. And then she finally hit the the honest understanding God gives is now and I said, what say that again? She said, The honest understanding God gives is now and I'm like, Man as deep, right? Because when Christ comes to people, he don't come to us when we're in our, when we're good, right? He don't come to us when we already cleaned up and got better. He comes to us as people are shooting up or as they're smoking or as they're in a state of depression, in the state of suicide. Those are the moments when Christ really truly reveals himself to a lot of people in most of the time. It's in the state of crisis. Yeah, sometimes it's not as extreme as those instances. But for the people in my life, it has been extreme right? So Dugan, is stands for you know, the honest understanding God gives is now when is now in the middle of your addiction hurt and affliction as you sit and reminisce on your past pains and abuses are dug for Christ is someone who helps mend the broken while guiding the loss to God who meets you in your mess, to show the mercy and the love of Christ despite your circumstances and choices or choices. And to meet edges. I mean, it doesn't matter who we are, you know, Christ loves us. And He wants us to turn to him. Right. So let's dug in for crisis. That's how it came about.

Gabrielle Leonard: 4:21

No as good, can you I realize, let me let's go back a little bit because I got it. I got a question for you about that acronym. But before I ask that question, I want to ask how, how did you come to Christ?

Mashaun Hirschler: 4:33

Um, so I was Muslim for about eight and a half years and prior, so I got out in 2017 out of prison, my charges got overturned completely. I was in prison for robbery, kidnapping and torture. And somehow I did four and a half years and I got a bench warrant, and everything got wiped away. So it was no longer on my record at all. Yeah, I got out was on drugs and moving around, I ended up at haven for hope with my son and my wife, and I had in San Antonio. And while I was here, I started reading the Bible. And my father came into my life and found out that he was ordained minister. I told my dad, I said, Dad, you know, I don't really believe in my god like that. But if you're willing to teach me your God, then you know, I'm willing to try. And so you know, for months, I've been reading and just diving in and just absorbing the word of Christ, right, just getting it into my spirit. I read it every day, I have my what I call my OG Bible, and all my markings in it all my highlights, right? Read it every day for like six months. One day, I was sitting in a group. And prior that day, I woke up and I was raging on everybody. Like, I was just mad at everybody. I was cussing everybody out, cussing the guards out. My son, my wife, like I was just mad. And I was playing pool when his guard come up, be like, Hey, man, brother, we have in a men's group, why don't you come in to the men's group? And you know, just chill. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll be there. Me just naturally being a man of my word. If I agree to something, I'm obligated to do it. Right. No matter how I feel, if I agree to it, I'm gonna do it. And I realized what I just did, and I'm like, Man, why don't I just agree to this? Like, I ain't trying to be around nobody. Anyway, so I get up, I go inside the group and I sit down. And you know, they did a little Dong thing. And, you know, we're doing a little meditation, and we're just sitting there and this gentleman starts reading something. And out of nowhere, everything just goes black for me. Right? Everything goes dark. I didn't see nobody no more. The gentleman who invited me fell asleep. Another gentleman got up and wheeled somebody else off to the bathroom. Somebody else got up and left. And that was the last thing I remembered. Then out of nowhere, everything was just dark. And I heard three words, right. And it was Christ that said, I was there. And when that happened, it was a it was like a flashback. So you hear in the movies that when people die, right? You have a flashback of your life. Well, I wasn't dying. But I did have a flashback of my life. And in every moment, I saw when I was younger, my mom was being raped rarely when I was like, nine, and I felt alone, right? Like I felt hopeless. And you know, Christ was like, man, I was there. When I was sleeping outside on the streets with my mom, and you know, cry for like, man, I was there too. And as he went through my life, right, he was just revealing these things to me in the day, I went to foster care at 13. My grandma, she sent me to foster care. And like I begged her to stay. And Christ showed me the image of me holding on to the door. He said, Man, I was there. Right? And then he just he just kept going through these these these dire moments. And my mom called one time when I was in foster care and said, she left, she would leave in Texas. I never wanted to come to Texas. I'm not from Texas. And when she said that, she left Texas, right, it broke me. And Christ like, man, I was there too. Right? And, and again, right, he just kept revealing himself. And so as I became a teenager, and I was running the streets, and I was gang banging and stuff, and there was situations that would happen, and I get wasted, like drunk drunk, and I'll call my mom and I'll be begging her to come and get me like my Why did you leave me? Why can't you come and give me I need you to come and give me because I don't want to be here. No more. I don't want to I don't want to live this life. No more. Christ like man, I was there. Right. And one of the images that comes to me the most, and it happened to me several times, but one time, I tried to kill myself in Austin, when I was out in the streets. And I was walking down the highway in the middle of the highway, and I was walking down and trying to get hit by a car, but I was wasted. I was drunk. And I fell asleep on the embankment on the side of the highway. I wake up to this dude that I was selling dope to right. One of the smokers out there, man, he picked me up over his shoulders, and carried me back to my baby mamas house. And I asked him I said, Man, why did you do that bro? Like, man, I want to I want to die. And he literally looked at me and he said, Man, so my street name used to be Casper, right? He like man, Casper. You ain't like the other dope dealers out here, man. Like you care about us. And like, man, you can't go bro. Like, we need you out here. And I'm like, Man, oh, he made no sense. Ain't no love out here in the streets. Ain't no no respect and nothing. But then shortly after that, a few months after that, right? I'm drunk again. And I'm on the side of a gas station. And I'm drunk and I call my mom and of course she can't come and get me. And these people that I sell dope to. They roll up and they see me a casper man wait What are you doing? And like, I'm just, I'm out of it. Like they see that I'm out of it. Right? I got a dope on me, I got money on me and everything. And these these individuals that are addicts, right, they're smokers. They pick me up, put me in the back of the car, drive me to a safe location, put me in a room feed me Give me stuff to like, rein me back. Never robbed me, never took no money or no dope for me. And, you know, saying just made sure that I was good. And I cried, right? Like, I was crying. And they didn't treat me any different. They didn't, like, look at me any different. And guys like, man, you see, I was there. Wow. When we

Gabrielle Leonard: 10:41

think about those spaces, quote, unquote, those spaces, the spaces where drug addiction is happening, prostitution, gun violence, those spaces where that's heavy, we think, okay, Christ isn't there. He's not present there, where he is present, is in the church, where he is present and doing work is maybe we may assume a nicer neighborhood. You know, like, that's where he's at. But he's not in these spaces. Where there's prostitution, drug addiction, people, people, you know, strung out.

Mashaun Hirschler: 11:13

Yeah. Now, Christ is more present in those places, than he is in some of the other places that we would deem where Christ is right. Like you were saying, like some of the cleaner places, or even in a church house, or in the revivals, these church events, so they did a big music thing, right? For all the famous singers came down and all of San Antonio went out to the 80s. In their crisis, they're in not necessarily in the projects, and the ghetto was like crisis more so present in those darker places. Because, you know, when Christ was walking the earth, he said with the tax collectors, he ate with the prostitutes. He slept with these individuals when they offered to house him, right? And the Sadducees and Pharisees like man, like why are you with these people like these people? Or are dirty, their own clean the unworthy, right? Why are you with them? Like, you can't be the Son of God. Right? And, you know, he just he just check some lay man, who you to say it is man, like, look at your life, right? Before we can judge anybody else or judge what they're going through or the situation that they're at, or the environment that they're being raised in, before we can cast shade on that place. And you know, so as my life continued, and then I ended up in prison several times. And the last time I was in prison, the four and a half years, there was two and a half years there that no mail no commissary, no word from the free world, no nothing. And it was just me. And there was times when, like, I broke, I broke a couple of times in there mentally, right, emotionally, and crisis, like, man, I was there. Right. And so when he revealed all these things to me, and he brought it up to my present life as I was sitting there in that chair, and you know, Brandy, Brandy prayed prior to us coming to San Antonio, prior to brandy pray, and I said, Man, you need to pray to God, because I don't believe Oh, my god like that. And we was only in like, three days or four days in detox, right, we'll detoxing ourselves, by ourselves. And she prayed, and she, like, man, God, bring our kids back into our life. The very next day, I get a phone call from my son's mom, saying, Man, you need to get your son. Because you know, he already has some felonies and stuff. He's on his way to jail. They want to try him as an adult, and he that goes with you, or he goes into the system. And I'm like, Man, bring them to me. And they have no food. I didn't have nowhere to go. I didn't have no job. Right. I didn't have nowhere to live. But this was my child, right? And I'm his father. So I mean, to me, I felt like I didn't have no choice like this is this is the only option is to take him. And I brought him in in Christ like man, like I was there. Right? And he answered my prayer, right. And so when Christ told me, he was there, he just showed me all these moments, where, you know, I felt the loneliness. And he made me realize that I was never alone. Right? When I tried to commit suicide, I got a big scar on my arm, where I cut myself, right, and I cut the cartilage on top, and the cartilage on the bottom. And there's two veins that run through here. And neither one of the veins was touched at all. It was a clean cut all the way through and crushed. Like man, I was there. And at that moment, that was when I knew Jesus was real. Right and that that he loved me. Period like, and it wasn't biblical. It wasn't like none of that teaching and nothing It was just simply lie. Amen. Like I've never I've never known a love like that before, to where you're willing to just be by my side at all times, right? And so that's how that's how I came to know and understand who Christ was. And I left that room and I cried for like two hours, and I smoked like a whole pack of cigarettes. I called my wife out, and I'm like, Man, babe, he's real. He's real. And she's like, What are you talking about? I said, man, God is real. She's like, God, no, I said, no, like, you ain't understanding like Christ is real. Like he, he is. He's a real thing. Right? And, and it was, it was hard for me to grasp that concept. But that day when he said those be words, to me, it just, it altered the whole course of my life. It flipped everything upside down. And ever since then, I've been, I've been talking for him, right? Like, I took everything that he he brought into me, and, you know, he, he made me who I am. And the reason why he did was so I can men, I can go inside saints playground, and you know, saying beat him up a little bit. Make some sand in this phase.

Gabrielle Leonard: 16:15

You want to play?

Unknown: 16:18

Man, Shawn, I

Gabrielle Leonard: 16:21

think knowing that story, put so much weight on when you say like, what's the first words of the first part of the login for Christ? Like the acronym? Like, the honest, understanding God gives us now is now it makes so much sense to me. And I know like, I think when I asked you like, what does that mean? When you say the honest understanding God gives us now and am I am I right? When I say like for you, like you're talking about the love of God, that's the honest understanding. And I was telling this to Michelle, earlier, I was like, man, it's something that I noticed about the way you talk about the love of God is it doesn't feel fluffy at all, like, you know, like, there's some way we can talk about God's love in a real fluffy manner. And we're only certain people can connect with it. But the way you talk about Christ's love and how it was demonstrated to you feel so weighty, it feels like revelation, it feels it literally feels like this. It feels like liberation. It feels like something coming in and bringing this very divine light, like busting up the place. Like if you thought one way about who you were, and the and what your purpose was, or the level of of a level of destiny that was over your life or who you could even be or what limitations were there. It just all gets blown up. By this, almost this intro I don't know if like intruding is the word but it just seems like man he comes invading Yeah. Or it's like man, like there's just there it feels like the the words we have in the English language fall short, to describe the level of depth. I think that you put to the way that spelled I'm sure you guys listening can hear it. When you talk about God's love. It's so deep. It's so rich. And it really is this whole revelation, not just in your head, not just in your heart, your body, the whole circuit all everything that's around you. And I think that that's just incredible. So dope is

Mashaun Hirschler: 18:21

cool. Well, you know, I've never received love, right? I never received honest love from anybody. Yeah, my mom abandoned me. My dad wasn't there. My family gave up on me. Everybody that I knew in my life, right, the my first love, she had she got pregnant and had an abortion, right. So there was never really a time in my life where I really received any kind of love. But then when Christ revealed himself to me in in that manner, right in that intimate manner. It changed my world because like man, like so this is this is what he was talking about in the Bible, right when he was living. There's a lot of words right in the Bible. There's a lot of things that he said. But as I read all the stories, right, there isn't a story that I haven't read. That doesn't reveal the glory and the love that he shows us right that he wants to give to us.

Gabrielle Leonard: 19:20

So what's some of what's been some of those passages or stories for you that you just you see yourself in and you see Christ's love in

Mashaun Hirschler: 19:29

the My favorite one is the Samaritan woman right? When he walks up to the well and you know, he like man, can you give me a drink of water? And she like man, like do you know you're talking to like, Man, why are you asking me for drinking water? And then he reveals all these things to her. And even at the time that you know, he was explaining she still didn't want to believe until he invaded her life and like man, I know about all your husbands and I know about the man that you're with right now. There's not even your husband, but you Even still, despite all of that, Riley men, you are worthy to receive what I'm what I'm trying to give the salvation that I'm trying to give you. And, you know, all these doubts that society has placed on her and just tore her down, right? And so she has she lived in this in this world where she wasn't worthy. And heroes this this random man, right? And it just comes in and says now like, like you're more than worthy, right? You're more worthy than the ones that have beat you down. Right? You're, you're more than that. And because I say so and because I see you, I see who you are. And then you know, you got bargains, right? The prisoner that was released. You know, when when they asked him like, Who do you want the crowd? Who do you want, right? And they say, man, give us boredom, as give us boredom, as I give us the murderer give us the the person who deserves to die. And you know, we won't Christ to die, even though he doesn't deserve it. And he came down and wove himself in flesh to to save us because no matter what rules or anything that he tried to get us to do to understand His love, He knew that we was never going to get right. And so there had to be an act of ultimate sacrifice. And that ultimate sacrifice was out of love. You know, it's like a parent dying for his child. And that's where we are. We are God's child.

Gabrielle Leonard: 21:33

Man. That's Michelle, and thank you so much for sharing, you know, something that I hear already throughout the story. You know, your story, as you've been telling it is, how your life has been changed by relationship. Whether it's your relationship with Christ, how your life has been changed by people intervening in your life, even just thinking about like the people that you were selling drugs to how they, they intervened, and they cared for you. They didn't take advantage of you and your moment of weakness, but they actually saw you and they supported you and I loved that story. But meeting people where they're where they're at, I know this about you that meeting people where they're at is a very key piece. It's key to your ministry looking for Christ. And I just wonder why is that why is meeting people where they're at so important?

Mashaun Hirschler: 22:31

Well, for the simple fact that in our society, our churches have placed his sense of burden on people that you have to change before you can come into the church house, even though that's not what Christ said, rarely. Anybody I've talked to that, you talk to him about Christ. They're like, yeah, man, I'm gonna come to God when when I get my stuff together. I'm gonna come to God when you know, everything is better for me, right? I gotta, I gotta I gotta stop smoking, or I gotta stop getting banging. You know, I'm not ready right now. Right? But that's not what Christ did when he came in the tax collectors. Right? He went and sat down with them and they're like, man, what can we do? And he like, man, take what take what is needed to be taken that belongs to Caesar and didn't the rest of it let the people have stopped taking the extra Stop? Stop taking advantage of the people around you stop doing the evil things right? repent for your sins, but Christ's quiet switches man, he he reached a he talked to the ones that wasn't right. He didn't go to this has a cease and the Pharisees, the people that was supposedly got their stuff together. But there's a lot of broken people. And when we hear the word of God, we hear all of these college phrases, right? These people they went to the ology school, and they want to give the breakdown of different months. And like how all this happened. When Christ just simply said, Man, you will know my people by the love that they give, not by the judgment, not by how big their churches not by how many people are following them. But how, by the love that they give you that would how you normal people. And how do you save somebody that is broken, right? Like, my mom, despite the fact that she kicked me out at night, right? Her story is a story of brokenness is a story of pain. When she was younger, she was molested. And when you know, she got older, her first husband beat her and almost killed her a couple of times. Took her first son from her in she got when my dad who was a black man, and back then it wasn't cool for white woman to deal with a black man. And so she was prosecuted in right by her own family and then by the people around her. And so she just stayed in the state of depression and is the state of darkness right. And nobody came and met her where she was they didn't They didn't talk to that little girl that had to get boxed away. And so she had to live with this stuff forever and then hurt people hurt people. So her pain and trauma passed down to me. And then my pain and trauma ended up passing down to my kids. And up until when Christ spoke to me, right, was when everything got altered for my family. And, but it's like, man, some people will be like, Man, well, your mom did this to you know, my mom to this, right? Her parents didn't do it to her, because then you tell the story about my grandma, right in her parents, right? My mom's parents. And then you keep telling me stories, despite the color, despite the race, there was trauma that just kept getting passed down over and over again. And the thing is, every time they went to church, they heard all of this stuff. But nobody just talked to them where they was at, it's like they had to put on a mask, they had to pretend. And society makes us pretend to be something that we're not. And when we do that, we keep burying our hurts and our pains. And we keep burying these things that Satan uses in our life to keep us trapped, to keep us chained even though we think we're free. But in order to when you meet somebody where they're at mentally, emotionally and physically, what you're doing is you're talking to the authentic person, you're talking to that person. And when you talk to that person, you can start the healing process.

Gabrielle Leonard: 26:37

Now that's good. Michelle is really powerful. Because, yeah, it's so crucial that people are able to be where they're truly at. I think about so many stories in Scripture, Hagar story is one of them. of transformation, not because someone put on a show, but they were God. They they witnessed God meeting them in the middle of a lot of their junk and mess, whether it was mess they created on on their own, or mess that other people created for them. Or the mixture of all of that, you know, which is so much of life is a mixture of our own mess and junk and some stuff we inherited. This I did, and this might be before me did. Yeah. But um, but yeah, but we find like God's presence, true presence, and our presence in the mess of it all not pretending is really is transformative.

Mashaun Hirschler: 27:36

A good example was recently, Messiah ran away. He climbed out the window, crawled over to his friend's house garden, right, whatever. So the first time I went over there, all the kids or the kids, I've been mentoring and all the kids was in there. And they didn't see me standing at the screen door because it was inside. And a lot of people don't understand that when you have a light on inside and it's dark outside. You can't see outside, but everybody can see inside, right? Yeah. So I'm standing watching them married, and they all got guns, and they all got drugs and they smoking weed, and they drank and right. And when they realize who it is, right? They're like, Oh, man, it's pastor Shawn. And everybody starts like kind of straightening up just a little bit, right? But they didn't put nothing all the way up, right? And they come outside. Hey, pas, what you doing? And you know, long story short, I'm trying to get my son to come out. Well, it took about 30 minutes for them to take me to where my son was. As I was there, they're like, man, Pastor, go ahead and tell your son, whatever you need to tell him because he doesn't feel he's scared right now. Right? And so we want to be here with him as you speak to him, right? And I'm like, I call it the only reason why I gave him that power. Because one of the kids that he read the Bible, right? It's a whole story within itself. But so I'm like I call I said, but I'm not gonna tell my son nothing. Right? I'm not gonna say nothing to him. I have nothing to say. I said, but what I want is for y'all, to tell him why you are really out here. Right? And this is and we're talking when you talk about me somebody in their mess in the middle of whatever they're going through, right? This was 1130 at night. They had guns, they had drank, they were smoking. They've been in party mode this whole time. And at this moment, these kids these youngsters started pouring into my son about their traumas about how they was raised, and why they chose to be in the streets, right? They was talking about how they had to eat food, eat as much food at school before they came home because they didn't know they was going to have no food. Right? They they talked about the abuses that was happening that their homes they talked about going to CPS because they walked in on their parents shooting up dope and smoking dope, right? And somebody found out that the baby was there and took the baby out the house and he ended up going to grandma's house. I mean, so These kids, right? These babies in the middle of partying, right? Smoking weed and drinking and everything. I mean, it was like 10 of us outside, right? Or 12 of us, including me and my son, and they're pouring in to my son, right? And they're telling them their pains. And then they turn around, and he looked back at me and they're like, Man, can you pray with us? I mean, that's the best example of meeting somebody where they're at whatever they're doing no matter what it is, right. And that's how Christ comes into our life. He doesn't wait for us to put all of our mess away. He's not going to wait for those kids to put the guns up and the drugs up and in the booze, right and go to a church house. And then oh, then now I'm gonna meet you. Crisis and say, Come to me, way down the street in you will see me just services. Yeah, you know, saying Christ says, Man, I'm right here, I'm knocking. And all you got to do is open the door. Right? If you open up your eyes, you will see me if you open up your ears, and you decide that you want to listen, because you know, you can be in a crowded room. And I can be talking to somebody, there's a lot going on. But if I if I stop listening to the person who's sitting in front of me and start trying to listen to what's going on out here, right in the crowded with all this noise, I'm going to hear something, and I'm going to hear it clearly. And I'm not going to hear the person that's sitting right next to me. And that's what Chris is saying, like, get away from that noise and listen to me, I'm here. I'm already here. In you know, meeting somebody in the middle of weather,

Gabrielle Leonard: 31:37

man, it's good. Is there any practical advice that you'd give to someone who's going, Man, I want to be that person who meets people in the middle of their mess. I want to be the person who someone feels like I could talk to you and be real with you. I don't have to put on a facade in order to be in the same space as you. If someone's wanting for that to be them. What advice would you you give them

Mashaun Hirschler: 32:05

you got to be real about your pain,

Gabrielle Leonard: 32:08

like lead forward in that, like, you need to be able to read about your own pain.

Mashaun Hirschler: 32:12

Yeah, that's good. And so when I talk to people, I don't talk to people about like, I don't talk to them from where I'm at now. That's good. I talked to them from the pain that I suffered. So when I talk to somebody, and they tell me their story, I myself mentally and emotionally, I can go back to a time when I felt that same way. And you know, anybody looking back on their life, they can see how things could have been, or are where Christ was right, or where God was in that moment. And so that's what I do. I just talk from that place, right? And so the circumstances are never going to be the same. The feelings are, right, we, at some point in time in our life, we felt trapped, we felt violated, right? It doesn't have to be to a certain extreme, to feel that, that stronger than emotion. And so the best advice I can give is being honest with our own true feelings and being honest with ourselves, and being able to talk from that place when we're talking to people because people don't want advice all the time. Yeah, they fix it. Yeah. They really just want somebody honestly, they want somebody to understand. And so when we speak to somebody, we should speak to them. And explain to them in a manner in our story, or whatever we're sharing, in a way that hey, I'm not telling you this to fix it. I'm just telling you this to let you know that I'm here with you. Right here right now. I'm here with you. And that I love you. Right. And when somebody says that to somebody, that word gets thrown around so much does Yeah. But when somebody who means it says it, that man, I love you, and Christ loves you. And you do matter. That I mean, when when you're coming from that place, it changes everything.

Gabrielle Leonard: 34:09

And I think when you when I when I when I see consistently in your story, when those words are matched up with people's presence, because we can say a lot of things. The word love has been tossed around a whole lot. Your loved your love. God loves you. Jesus loves you. But it hasn't always been matched with presence. Sometimes we've said it from a pulpit, distant from my people that are hurting, but what does love mean? Yeah, yeah, like that's the only it's now it's, you know, it's love with skin on it. When we win, then we're committed to beat to walking with people in the middle of whatever it is. So I like that's a that's a really good word. Michelle and I, I hear that. I hear that. Shawn, thank you so much for being on this episode. I think my

Unknown: 34:55

pleasure. Yeah. gave a lot to to chew on. Just the stories were powerful.

Gabrielle Leonard: 35:02

So thank you for being vulnerable. Being transparent, being honest, being real, being real, like you did you did all of that. Yeah, I felt your presence was very felt in this in this room. And and hopefully, you guys are feeling it even just listening to Marshawn tell his story and until the story of what he gets called him to do right now. Thank you. cool deal. I see ya! If you're hearing this message, you've listened to the entire episode. And for that I am deeply grateful. I hope this episode resonated with you and if it did help us out by sharing this episode, and leaving a review on Apple podcasts, and Spotify. Most importantly, reach out to let me know how you're engaging with this episode, and what topics you'd like to see covered in the future. You can connect with us on social media, or get in touch with me directly at Gabrielle at returning to joy.com to share your heart. I'll see you in two weeks for a new episode.