The Middle of Your Marriage

God Hears Her Podcast

Episode 164 – The Middle of Your Marriage with Dorothy Littell Greco

Elisa Morgan & Eryn Adkins with Dorothy Littell Greco

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Dorothy: They revealed that it was… that day was their 50th anniversary.

Eryn: Oh…

Elisa: Oh, my goodness.

Dorothy: Yes. And… and the husband said when they announced it in church a couple of weeks ago, I turned to my wife and said, let’s go. There’s always more for us to learn. And I just thought in that moment that’s the couple I want to be like when I’m in my eighties…

Elisa: Gorgeous.

Dorothy: … you know, if we live that long who knows, but their responsiveness to each other, their willingness to grow, even though they had been married all these years was just so deeply moving to me.

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Elisa: I have a friend that we’re going to talk to in just a second here, and I want to share with you how I first got to know her. I mean, first I…

Eryn: Oh, okay, tell me.

Elisa: … got to know her through her artwork, which is photography, which is amazing. And so, she would write, like, a blog for, back in the day, Elisa Really, but she would always illustrate it with a photograph. And I mean, I would be just completely absorbed. Just a picture of nature, like a closeup of, like, a heart shaped fuchsia or just something just gorgeous. But then I got to know her better when we were speaking at an event together. And this is just between you and me and everybody who’s listening. We were, like, speakers…

Eryn: Just the thousand other people out here.

Elisa: We were just, like, speaking and we didn’t know each other personally. We knew each other, like, professionally and we had ridden up to this place together, and we get out and we go into our rooms and I’m not going to say the identity of the place we were. But Eryn, I am not kidding you. I don’t think it had been touched for, like, forty years. And the carpet was, like, completely worn out, the linoleum, I said linoleum, was, like, completely worn out. It… I mean, I could just…

Eryn: Oh no.

Elisa: … imagine, like, mildew. It was so gross. And we were both trying to be super godly and ignore it.

Eryn: Yeah, because saying something smells is ungodly. So don’t ever, ever say something smells. 

Elisa: It’s like, hi, hi there. Did you no- Oh, I’m not gonna talk about that. Did you… did you? And pretty soon we’re like, did you notice? [Laughter]

Dorothy: I totally forgot all about that until you reminded me. 

Elisa: So, here’s Dorothy. We are so glad to be together in a non-smelly spot, Dorothy.

Dorothy: Indeed. You know…

Elisa: Let me transition here. You know, I suppose there are such worn out and smelly moments in an older marriage… Right?

Dorothy: There you go, there you go.

Elisa: … I’ll make us transition. But Dorothy, you have a very unique peephole into what mature marriage is all about. And… and I love this specifically because I’m in a mature marriage and I know, Eryn, you’re going to love this because you’re in a new marriage, but you’re mature. Let’s just dive into… mature marriages. You know, what are they going to look like? So, Dorothy, start us off with how long have you been married, and how did you and your husband first meet and when? 

Dorothy: Sure. We will be celebrating our thirty-third anniversary coming up in just a few months. We met in 1981 at Boston University. We were both in the same college, and then we ended up in the same church around the corner. We were also part of a very fledgling intervarsity fellowship group that was maybe, like, fifteen, sixteen people. So, there was a lot of opportunities that we had to get to know each other. We did not start dating immediately. He’s three years younger than me, and as a college freshman, he was… he was young. So, I liked him as a person. I got… as I got to know him, really respected his faith walk and his vision as an artist, but we didn’t actually start dating each other for five or six years until after we first met each other. 

Eryn: Wow. I’m curious at what point was it in your heart, or his heart, or was it the same timing, or was it different timing, that you both were like, oh, there might be something more than friendship.

Dorothy: He might respond to that question differently than I would, to be honest with you. I think that we were both so intentional about pursuing art and pursuing Jesus, and that was not a normal thing in our community…

Elisa: Yeah.

Dorothy: … You know, Boston is a very intellectual place. So, there’s lots of scientists, and doctors, and academics, and we didn’t really fit into those categories, so there was that sense of otherness that we felt, which I think helped us to connect on a deeper level. But we also had a very, very rocky… that first relationship, we ended up getting engaged, and then he broke off the engagement. We didn’t talk to each other for almost two years…

Elisa: Oh, wow.

Eryn: Oh…

Dorothy: So, there was a lot happening, that’s why I said that there might be a different answer if you asked him. I think that perhaps that I maybe was pushing a little bit harder than I should have, that perhaps he wasn’t quite in the same place that I was. There was mutual affection and respect, but I think that perhaps I was maybe a little more aggressive than I should have been, which I’m sure contributed to that messy two years that we had apart.

Eryn: So, two years, what did you tell yourself in the two years? What did you do, how did you mend your heart and repair it? I mean, did y’all talk, all the things? I just kind of want to know that two-year period. 

Dorothy: Really, there was a lot that happened…

Eryn: Sure, I bet.

Dorothy: … So, there was a lot of tears, a lot of doubts, a lot of, I was older, you know, when we… when he broke off the engagement, I was twenty-nine, so, there was that question of, is that it? Like, did I just blow the only chance that I’m going to have to get married? I think one of the most important things that happened during that time, I had set aside about five days to pray and to fast. I’m not one of those people who loves fasting. I know some people seem to have an easy time with it. I don’t. I get headaches, I get cranky, I don’t sleep well, but I really felt called by the Lord to… to just go before Him and pray because I felt so stuck. I was angry, I didn’t understand because he would refuse to talk to me. There was no debriefing, there was no, this is what happened. It was just, I’m done. I don’t want to talk to you ever again. And then he… he left the… the church that we were part of, you know, all the friendship circles that we had were totally overlapped, but he would just absent himself when there was some kind of a gathering.

Elisa: This almost feels like a divorce, Dorothy, you know…

Dorothy: Yes, yeah.

Elisa: … in a way, at that season, yeah. 

Dorothy: In that five days, I felt like… that the Lord, what… what He said to me, again, it wasn’t an audible voice, it was just a sense in my spirit, you need to forgive him. And there’s no guarantee that anything is going to come as a result of your forgiving him. And my first response was anger. It’s just like, why do I need to forgive him? He didn’t even apologize. He didn’t own what he did. But obedience is important to me. And I felt like, okay, if this is what I need to do, I will do that. And I worked through the process of forgiving him, which meant, I wouldn’t recommend this for everybody, but I was so angry and I didn’t know how to process the anger. So, we lived in a very gritty part of the city. I bought two dozen cheap glasses, and I went out and I threw them against the rocks that were there, and there was something about just being able to release that…

Eryn: Yeah.

Dorothy: … that helped. I did a lot of counseling during those two years. And then when he had this experience at work one day of maybe you made a mistake, and reached out to me to say, could we get together to talk? I was able to come without any baggage or without any sense of you owe me, or why didn’t you…  I was just able to say, you probably were right in breaking up with me because I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to have the kind of relationship that I really want to have. 

Elisa: Oh, kudos. I mean, Dorothy, that is so courageous. You know, most of the time we don’t know, we don’t have handed to us some instructions for how to recover from a breakup. That’s normal, to not know what to do, and it sounds like you just leaned into what God was leading you to in the moment, and that word obedience is really grabbing me. People actually pay money now to shatter cheap dishes against brick walls. 

Dorothy: I know, it’s funny. 

Eryn: Rage rooms, I actually looked one up recently. There’s a few in Georgia.

Elisa: But you know, I… I love your very honest and human experience and expression. You know, it wasn’t like, oh, just check the box, I forgive you. There was a lot of soul searching. There was… immediate obedience. There’s a physical release, and… then there is a yielding, and… and I love how honest you are about that. And so, what you said is that because you had done your work, as we call it, you were ready when he returned. Now in the next season, you went on to begin this marriage. What did you learn, even from the breakup, as you reestablished a beginning that was different from the first relationship you had had to the engaged slash becoming married relationship? What was the same? 

Dorothy: I think that what was different is that I had more ownership of my stuff. Early on, the first time around, I think that we both seemed to fall into the default of saying it was his intimacy issues, where having done that work of forgiveness, and gone to counseling, had really difficult conversations with friends where I was able to say, what do you see in me that needs to grow? How do you experience me in a relationship that’s helpful? How is… how do you experience me as abrasive? Asking, you know, and those are awful questions to ask people if you really want to hear the answer, right? Really receiving that feedback…

Eryn: That’s so true.

Dorothy: …is… listening and saying, yes, I do have control issues. Yes, I am afraid. Yes, it’s hard for me to trust people. So…

Eryn: Yeah.

Dorothy: … coming into the marriage that… with that self-awareness and with that humility of being able to say, I’m really struggling to trust you right now. There’s some things that you said yesterday that triggered me. And the first time around I would have manipulated, or blamed, or just withdrawn, but I think that somehow there was enough work that I had done that helped me to own my stuff, be humble, and then stay present as opposed to ejecting, which was… that was my modus operandi, it’s when things triggered me, I would just kind of go away.

Eryn: Owning and being present is such a discipline that is so hard to do…

Dorothy: Yes.

Eryn: … because oftentimes we want to do the thing that gives us comfort and makes us feel better about a circumstance, so owning and being present is the… sometimes the complete opposite of that. I really admire that. 

Elisa: We are down in the weeds right now, and I love it. I am really struck by the trajectory of your relationship with Christopher. That you started, and maybe you haven’t even mentioned it, but maybe there was some rose-colored glow in the beginning, but you guys came to marriage with some real work already in process, and that has to have shaped your early marriage, and also informed your midlife marriage. I think a lot of us just miss that and don’t even start paying attention until things start falling apart. What are your comments about that? 

Dorothy: Yeah. I think that establishing really sound relational habits in your early years of marriage is super, super important, and that’s going to look different for everybody but choosing to be honest, and for us, from the get go, we practice confession of sin. So, anytime either one of us sinned…

Eryn: Wow.

Dorothy: … there was, you know… within twenty-four hours, we would come to the other person and say whatever it was. You know, and it’s easy, I think, for us to think about confession of sins being simply about the biggies, you know: I watched pornography, I got close to flirting with somebody at work. And those are really important to confess, but I think that…

Eryn: Yes. 

Dorothy: … the smaller things, the little hurts that we can easily minimize or overlook, are actually just important. So, for me to be able to say to him, you know, I was really, really irritable with you last night for no good reason, and I’m really sorry. The tendency is for us to dismiss that, to say, it doesn’t really matter. He probably didn’t even notice. Our spouses do notice, right? And when we can acknowledge that and apologize for it, there’s a way, I think, that it keeps the path of love open one to the other, which is super important. So, that was, you know, early, early on. Being part of a community, we were very aware that we were not going to be able to make it through a marriage without being around people who loved us, and cared for us, and supported us. That was really essential. So, whether that’s being part of a small group, or a prayer group, or whatever, just not isolating and thinking that you could do it yourself, and then that leads me to the final thing, which is being willing to acknowledge to other people the places where we’re falling, or failing, or struggling. We live in an age where image is everything. You know, we are so determined to convince other people that we are doing great. Everything is fine. The marriage is amazing, and that doesn’t serve us. Like, we have to be willing to invite other people into the broken places if we want to grow and if we want to be accountable, 

Elisa: Now, how did you begin to set up that expectation of honesty and safety? If I’m going to confess my sins to you, you’re not going to just leave me. 

Dorothy: We have to really want real health over the appearance of health. And that’s a question that I think we have to ask ourselves again, and again, and again. Are we content with putting out an image that suggests that we’re great, that this is the best marriage ever, that all of our kids are obedient, and following Jesus, and they never disobey? Or are we willing to go to our friends and say, you know, I really don’t like my husband in this season. I’m really struggling with my marriage, and that makes me really sad, and I don’t know what to do. So, I think that that matters. And for both Christopher and me, you know, again, we came in with an awareness of we have some besetting sins. For him, there was sexual addiction that he was sober from before we got married, but he knew that if he did not continue to be honest, and to be disclosive, and to confess his sins, that he could end up in a bad space. For me, coming in with my dad was an alcoholic for most of my… middle school and high school life, so, that contributed to part of my fears and my control issues. So, I had to be willing to say, yeah, my tendency is to doubt you. My tendency is to control things, to manipulate things, and if I don’t pay attention to that, that’s my default. I’m just going to go there. 

Eryn: Yeah. I love what you said, acknowledging the littles and not just the biggies. What you’re saying is, like, all these little things really compound to one big thing. So, if we’re not monitoring our heart, and identifying these little things, and bringing them to light, they ultimately will manifest into something really big.

Dorothy: Yes, and that’s a big part of, I think, what happens in midlife, right? Is we’ve had all of these disappointments, all of these things that have gone wrong, that have been hard, the hopes maybe that we had for the marriage that haven’t been actualized. And then we’re faced with, like, this gigantic wall of hurt, and pain, and disappointment, and that’s a big deal if that’s the first time we’re facing it, is in, you know, when…

Eryn: Yeah.

Dorothy: … we’re forty-five or fifty.

Elisa: As you look at a midlife marriage, what are some of the principles we need to really keep in mind? A lot of us expect that… by the time we get to midlife marriage, it’s all cool, you know, we’re all just gonna, like, skate and not sure that’s very realistic. Take us into your evolution into your middle marriage and what you’re discovering there, could you?

Dorothy: Maybe ten years ago, when Christopher and I were doing a little marriage… we do a lot of little marriage workshops, half day things. I was just sharing that with a couple from our church, they were a little bit older than we were, and when I said, hey, we’re doing this, you know, half day thing, do you want to come? And the wife’s response was, you know, we’ve been married for twenty-five years, and I think that we know everything that we need to know. So, I don’t really think that… there’s not any reason for us to give up half of our Saturday to come. And I remember at the time thinking, well, okay, you know, she’s been married a little bit longer than me.  Maybe when you get to twenty-five years, you know everything, you know…

Elisa: Magic. Yeah. 

Dorothy: Then contrast that with several years later, we were again doing a half day marriage conference and during the lunch break, I sat down with an older couple. And I have to be careful when I say older, because people refer to me as older now in my sixties. They were in their eighties. And I just… I assumed like, oh, you know, maybe they had both been widowed and they recently remarried and that’s why they’re here. So, I was just asking them, you know, like, what… what brought you here? Why… why are you here? And… and they revealed that it was… that day was their 50th anniversary. 

Eryn: Oh…

Elisa: Oh, my goodness.

Dorothy: Yes. And… and the husband said, when they announced it in church a couple of weeks ago, I turned to my wife and said, let’s go, there’s always more for us to learn. And I just thought in that moment, that’s the couple I want to be like when I’m in my eighties…

Elisa: Gorgeous.

Dorothy: … you know, if we live that long who knows, but their responsiveness to each other, their willingness to grow, even though they had been married all these years was just so deeply moving to me.

Eryn: Yeah.

Dorothy: So, I think that that’s one of the key markers, Elisa, to having a mutually fulfilling marriage is the commitment to keep growing…

Elisa: Yeah.

Dorothy: … I think that’s what sanctification is all about. To me, sanctification is spending the entirety of our lives figuring out how to be more and more like Jesus. And when we’re more and more like Jesus, it’s going to benefit everybody because Jesus loved like nobody else loved.

Eryn: Yeah.

Dorothy: Right? When I read 1 Corinthians 13, that has become, like, the measure for how I’m loving my husband. If I feel stuck, if I know that I’m not loving him well, I often return to that and say, well, what are the specific things? Am I not being patient? Am I not being kind? Am I keeping offenses? So obviously that’s a measure of how God loves us, which is important for us to realize. But I think that looking at that as a metric for how am I doing? How am I loving? So, it’s commitment to grow, sanctification being a huge part of that. Having a telos or a sense of vision for your marriage, I think, is also really, really important, maybe particularly in the middle years when things are rapidly changing. If you’re a parent, your kids begin to be more independent, but their choices are far more consequential. Maybe you have aging parents that you’re trying to take care of, in that what’s called the sandwich generation, you know, where… where you’ve got people on both ends looking to us. So, the stakes are really high for us during that time period. And for us to be able to stay in the commitment, stay engaged, and really be looking out for what is God calling us to do together in this season. And that shifts, you know, it changes from season to season. 

Eryn: So, commitment to growing. What would you say, Dorothy, to the woman that’s listening, that maybe she feels like she has hit just a wall in every angle, where she deeply longs to grow and is staying committed, but her husband doesn’t desire it, doesn’t see it, those types of things that happen, those circumstances, what would you say to that?

Dorothy: I think I’d first say I’m sorry, because I think that there’s a deep pain in that, when one party wants to grow and the other keeps their feet stuck in the ground and is just disinterested. I think it’s really unfortunate and really, really difficult to be in that space. It requires a tremendous amount of deep, deep spirituality to not check out. And obviously there are times when choosing to end a marriage is legitimate, right? So, I don’t want to say, like, you should just always stay with your spouse and always keep praying for them no matter what. That’s not…

Eryn: Right. Yeah.

Dorothy: … what I mean. If there is, you know, it’s not a question of egregious sin happening and the other person is faithful, is somewhat communicative, but there is a sense of stuckness, I think the only thing that we can do is work on ourselves and pray, and pray, and pray, and hope that the Lord will do the work in our spouse, but there’s no guarantee of that, right? We might be praying, you know, I have several friends for whom what you just described is completely their space. And they have had to work really hard to continue to love, but I think that they’ve also, you know, done their own work. They’ve gone to counseling. They’ve sort of begun to understand how can I recalibrate my expectations for my spouse so that I’m not routinely thinking they’re going to be someone else or do something else that they’re just not. There’s wisdom there, right? To recalibrate our expectations…

Eryn: Yeah.

Dorothy: … come into reality for who you married, what the… relationship is. Really, really doing the hard work of forgiveness again, and again, and again. And then, you know, finding good female friends that can meet some of the needs that you have. One of the challenges that Christopher and I have had, he loves to pray. He’s, like, as extroverted as you could imagine, and I am pretty much as introverted as you could imagine. He loves to pray in large groups. So, he gets a lot of energy, you know, before church service on Sunday morning when the staff prays together, he loves that. He has not been so crazy about just praying with me. And that’s been, frankly, it’s been hard.

Eryn: Right. Yeah.

Dorothy: It’s been a little bit painful because I see him in these public settings, and then when I say like, can we pray there’s, you know, there can be a little nudginess sometimes. And that was a conflict for us probably for the first ten to fifteen years of our marriage. And then one day it was just like, duh, Dorothy, just, like, ask your female friends to get together and pray with you because a lot of them are in the same situation. So, then my need to pray gets satisfied and I’m not sort of holding it over Christopher that he’s not like me, or that he’s not doing something that I want him to do. So those kinds of micro adjustments, I think, can make a difference. But again, just to reiterate, I think that that’s a really, really hard space. And those women or men, if that’s the case, really would have my deep, deep empathy. 

Elisa: You know, you’re highlighting some of the unique, if I can say this, challenges or tests of midlife, waking up and recognizing he’s not going to probably ever be this particular human I was trying to mold him into. Now, what do I do? What are some of the other almost developmental realities we face in a middle marriage? And actually, when is middle marriage? What years are they? 

Dorothy: I guess technically it would be the years between forty and sixty-five. So obviously, you know, if somebody got married when they’re thirty, midlife and midlife marriage might feel a little bit different because they’re not in the middle of their marriage, but they are in the middle of their life.

Eryn: Yeah.

Dorothy: And of course, the reality is if you say that midlife is to sixty-five, well, who among us is going to live to a hundred and thirty? That’s a side point. There’s a tremendous amount of intentionality that I think midlife marriage requires of us. Maybe the best way to think about it is not to put your marriage or your life into cruise control. So, if you’ve been married for a length of time, you can get into these ruts or these patterns, and some of the patterns are great. I’m not saying that they’re all bad, but if we are not paying attention to when we need to shift gears, if we’re not looking at the dashboard light and seeing that it’s flashing, like, warning, warning, overheating, overheating, we’re going to get in trouble. So, taking it out of cruise control, having a car that’s in manual, thinking about your marriage in that way, that requires you to pay a great deal more attention to what has changed. What we need from each other is so different as each decade passes, right? You know, I have had chronic health issues now for twenty-two years. So, more than two thirds of… our marriage, I have had chronic health issues. Christopher didn’t sign up for that. He has had to adapt, and to adjust, and to really pay attention to what I need and how that affects him. And it does affect him in every sort of way. Like, I can’t work as much as I used to work. We can’t have sex as much as we would like to have sex because if I have four hours of sleep or if my pain levels are really high, it’s just too much for me. So, there’s that constant adaptation, the constant checking in with your spouse. I think a great question for us to ask each other is what do you need for me in this season? Because the seasons change. 

Elisa: And a lot of health issues pop up in these seasons, you’re right. And, you know, in a way, I know what you’re saying, about he didn’t sign up for it, but, you know, we make these vows: in sickness and in health, but we don’t know what they mean. And then it’s like…

Dorothy: We have no idea.

Elisa: … all of those vows we have to reinterpret and revisit, don’t we? 

Dorothy: Yes. And to stick to the covenant, you know, to be able to say, that’s what I promised. And by God’s grace and with the help of our friends, I’m going to continue to love you. And I guess maybe the other thing that has been so foundational for me in particular is the commitment to love. Like, I think that that commitment, to love the Lord with all my heart, with all my soul and to love my neighbor as myself, well, Christopher is my closest and most enduring neighbor. So, if that is in fact God’s call to me on my life, what does it mean for me to love him?

Eryn: That’s good.

Dorothy: And having that out in front of me as one of the most important things of my life has changed me profoundly. It’s made me a much better person. It’s made me a much humbler person. 

Elisa: Why do you think marriage is important to God? Why… why did He create this union? And… and not everybody has it, but when we do, what do you think God’s intent is for us? 

Dorothy: That’s a deep one. I think that marriage is a metaphor that’s meant to mirror God’s promise of faithfulness and of enduring love to us. So, if we can see it that way, I think that that’s a helpful paradigm for us to walk in. You know, marriage is a sacrament, it’s a covenant, it’s a means of grace. And again, that sense of, you know, the book of Hosea has always been really important to me. Seeing that as a way for us to understand God’s love towards us, even when we are unfaithful, even when we do dumb things. And if I look at that in the context of marriage, I think it’s also, there’s a lot of overlays. You know, God’s love for us, His faithfulness, the fact that He is not going to turn away from us. We have to choose to turn away from Him, but He’s not turning away from us. When we can have that mindset in the context of our marriage, I think that it gives us a sense of steadfastness, a sense of, you know, things could get really hard, and they have. We’ve had very hard seasons in our marriage several times, but as we hold on to God’s enduring love, His enduring faithfulness, and the fact that His love for us is just phenomenal. If we believe that, and if we overlay that onto our marriage, I think that it gives us both a vision for what our marriage could be like, as well as a sense of calling and encouragement. This is what your marriage can be if you continue to move towards Me, if you continue to follow after My example for you. And it sanctifies us. Again, having to love the person who you’re with day in and day out when you don’t feel like it…

Elisa: No kidding.

Dorothy: … when you’re mad, when you’re hurt, there is nothing like that in the world. 

Eryn: Yeah. Those are such good words, Dorothy, thank you. Would you pray over the marriages right now? The women that are listening and maybe some… if there’s some men out there listening to God Hears Her, just pray for the marriages, but also maybe pray for those, too, that are maybe longing for a mature marriage, and they don’t have one yet. Would you do that for us? 

Dorothy: Yes. I’d be happy to. Father, I thank You so much for Your love for us, and I thank You that it’s because You love us that we can love others. I thank You for the faithfulness of Your Holy Spirit to come and to give us love like manna every single day. That we would be able to trust You for the love that we need, for the grace, for the forgiveness, for the strength to love our spouse well. And Lord, we acknowledge that it’s a hard calling. It’s not one that’s always easy or effortless. And we thank You for giving us what we need to love well. Lord, I want to just ask that You would deliver a deposit of hope for those marriages out there where there is profound brokenness, and pain, and hurt. I ask that by Your presence [music], that You would speak in the possibility of change, the possibility of newness, the possibility of Your kingdom come in a marriage. And Lord, I pray specifically for those men and women who are struggling in their marriage because their spouse does not have the same values or the same sense of possibility that they do. Would You give them wisdom, and discernment, and patience, and grace, and would You allow them not to turn against themselves, or their spouse, or You. Give them the capacity to suffer with You in that space, believing that You will redeem all things in time. So, Lord, we thank You for Your goodness, we thank You for Your faithfulness, and we thank You that You show us what it looks like to love in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Elisa: Marriage can be so hard. It was great to hear Dorothy’s advice, especially for those of us wading through the waters of midlife currently. 

Eryn: And for those of us not there yet, we can put into practice the conversational skills Dorothy shared. Well, before we go, be sure to check out Dorothy’s book, Marriage in the Middle. You can find that and more at godhearsher.org. That’s godhearsher.org. 

Elisa: And if you like this episode or if you’ve been listening to the show for a bit, please leave us a rating and review so we can hear back from you. Remember, you’re part of the conversation, too.

Eryn: Thank you for joining us, and don’t forget, God hears you, He sees you, and He loves you because you are His. 

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Elisa: Today’s episode was engineered by Anne Stevens and produced by Jade Gustman and Mary Jo Clark. We also want to thank the amazing Our Daily Bread phone team for all of their help and support. Thanks everyone. 

Eryn: Our Daily Bread Ministries is a donor-supported nonprofit ministry dedicated to making the life-changing wisdom and stories of the Bible come alive for all people around the world.

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Eryn: God Hears Her is a production of Our Daily Bread Ministries.