81. How to thrive as a mom of 2 and military wife with Christian author Sydney Anne Bennett who is living with disability, chronic pain and illness

This week, we have another inspirational guest, Christian author, military wife and disability rights advocate, Sydney Anne Bennett, about her remarkable journey with chronic illness and pain.

Sydney's journey with diagnosis of disability began two weeks after her honeymoon, surviving seizures and chronic pain during a long military deployment, and learning how to bring raw honesty to God when faith feels thin. Her story shows how Scripture, community, and small daily mercies can hold us steady when our bodies and plans fall apart. 
• why Sydney starts writing "Fearfully And Wonderfully Broken" 
• what functional neurological disorder looks like in daily life, including seizures, paralysis, and stigma in medical care 
•  suffering and the fear of decades of pain 
• coping strategies during deployment, including mentors, school, and practical support 
• reframing public vulnerability after a seizure at school picture day 
• why we need constant surrender, not a one-time breakthrough 
• how a mentor relieves the pressure to turn pain into inspiration 
• rejecting prosperity gospel thinking and the burden of self-help faith 
• learning to pray with the Psalms when God feels far away 
• using humor and mobility aids without shame, including naming canes and wheelchairs 
• motherhood with disability, miscarriage grief, and building a home around dependence on the Lord 
• building a stronger marriage by depending on God first 

Sydney Anne Bennett is on Instagram and YouTube as the.annegirl 

Her website is sydneyannebennett.com Her latest book was published this past April and you can find it on her website, through Instagram, social media, or any major online bookstore.

Transcript

Deployment Extended And Fear Sets In

Sheila Nonato 0:00

Wow. Newly married and then your husband went on deployment for how long? He was supposed to be gone for nine months, and then one month before his return date, his deployment was extended indefinitely because of the Ukraine-Russian war. So he ended up being gone for almost a year, about eleven months. In Poland. In Poland and Germany, yes. And Germany. Wow. How did you cope with all of that?

Sydney Anne Bennett 0:23

It was really hard. And there were a lot of days where I did not think I'll be able to make it through the rest of this deployment. Um there were a lot of hard medical episodes, you know, needing to call the ambulance or having seizures or paralysis where I'd be stuck on the floor for hours. Sometimes I would avoid eating or drinking because I was scared I wouldn't be able to crawl across the bed or the room to my bathroom. And I just I was living in constant fear and constant pain.

Meet Sydney Bennett And Her Book

Sheila Nonato 0:53

Welcome to the Vell and Armour Podcast, Sisters in Christ. This week we speak with Sydney Bennett about her new book, "Fearfully and Wonderfully Broken: Fighting for Faith When You're Falling Apart." Sydney is the .anne girl on social media with more than 400,000 followers. She is an army wife, mother of two, and a disability rights advocate. Let's hear her story of living authentically before God and others, through her journey of marriage as a young wife and mother, and the trials of chronic illness. She was diagnosed with functional neurological disorder (FND) just two weeks after her honeymoon, navigating daily seizures and chronic pain. Did these challenges lead her away from or towards God? Let's find out.

Co-Host 1:46

Hello and welcome to the Veil in Armoyr Podcast. This is your host, Sheila Nonato. I'm a stay-at-home mom and a freelance Catholic journalist. Seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the inspiration of Our Lady, I strive to tell stories that inspire, illuminate, and enrich the lives of Catholic women to help them in living out our vocation of raising the next generation of leaders and saints. Please join us every week on the Veil and Armour Podcast, where stories come alive through a journalist's lance and mother's heart.

Sheila Nonato 2:17

Welcome to the Veil and Armour Podcast, Sisters in Christ. Today we welcome Sydney Anne Bennett, whose new book just came out yesterday, "Fearfully and Wonderfully Broken: Fighting for Faith When You're Falling Apart." And I'm truly humbled and honoured that you've come on to share your incredible, powerful witness. And do you mind if we started off with a prayer? I would love to. Okay, thank you.

Prayer And The Story Behind The Pages

Sydney Anne Bennett 2:42

Yeah. Father God, I just lift up this conversation to you, Lord. I thank you for the opportunity to be here and to talk about you above all things. I pray that you would direct the people who need to hear what we're going to talk about today to this podcast, to this episode, that it would be a blessing to them, and especially to those who are walking through suffering or who feel alone or asking hard questions about you, Lord, and about um the story that you've given them. I pray that this would be a comfort and encouragement to them and would point them to you and the glory that you have prepared for us. Thank you, Lord. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Sheila Nonato 3:19

Amen. Thank you so much. And I just wanted to introduce our listeners to you. I'm sure they know you already, but just uh give a little bit of um introduction. So Sydney Anne Bennett, and I'm pronouncing your last name correctly. Yes. Yes, okay. Sydney Ann Bennett is a writer, disability advocate, and speaker who helps people struggling with chronic illness and pain find confidence and hope while pointing them to Jesus. In 2002, Sydney began sharing her story on Instagram as The Anne Girl as a way of processing grief, faith, and the strange in-between of being both young and disabled. Today she encourages a global ode audience of over 300,000 people with honesty, humor, and hope that embraces Jesus and his heroic example on the cross. Sydney lives in rural Idaho with her husband, Colton, and their two daughters, Hadassah and Felicity. Now, did I pronounce her name correctly? Okay. Um, so that is for Queen Esther, correct?

Sydney Anne Bennett 4:19

Yes, yep, it's Esther's Hebrew name.

Sheila Nonato 4:22

That is beautiful, beautiful. Um, and so yes, so I am I'm excited to delve into this book. I mean, I've been reading it. Thank you. But I'm excited for you to sort of share your testimony with us, give us a little bit of a a hint of what's coming with the book for those who want to get this book. And I strongly suggest you you get it and also have a box of tissue with on hand.

Writing Through Pain Without Answers

Sheila Nonato 4:45

Um, but it's it's beautiful, it's powerful. Um, so yeah, first of all, how did this book come about? What prompted you to start the book?

Sydney Anne Bennett 4:54

So this book came about before I had a diagnosis, before I knew what was happening to me. And I was in so much pain every single day that there were nights that I would go without sleeping at all because the pain would keep me awake. And I remember coming out into our living room and our little apartment. We're newly married, this is in the first month of our marriage, and I would just write to process what was happening to me because I didn't have words or language that I could use to describe it. I had no diagnosis, no label that I could put on it. And so I was writing to process that. And I swore that those words would never see another person because they were stupid, they were way too vulnerable, they were broken, they were desperate, and I was asking questions about the Lord that I didn't know if Christians were allowed to ask. I felt like maybe I'm the only one struggling with these things. And as that year continued, my first year of being disabled, my husband was deployed overseas, and I just continued writing through the hard things. And as I, as the story is continued and the Lord has brought me through this season, I'm still disabled, but I'm seeing the threads of redemption that He's woven through the story and finding that many people who suffer honestly are feeling and asking the same hard questions I was, and so many of us feel like we're alone or that no one else is feeling this way. And how do you go to scripture or to a God and ask these questions that we're not supposed to say out loud? And so I'm pulling from my story in the book and from those early pages that I swore would never see another person. And I want to weave in how God has brought redemption through this story, but more specifically, how he brings redemption to other people who are struggling, who are suffering to hold on to him and hold on to their faith in the midst of a long sorrow.

Sheila Nonato 6:53

Amazing. Um, can you explain to us, for those who are just starting to know of your story, the health challenges you faced before your marriage and then after?

Symptoms Spiral And Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) Diagnosis

Sydney Anne Bennett 7:05

Yes. So I was perfectly healthy, um, very active, outdoorsy. And I, in about, I think it was 2021, I started experiencing chronic pain. We didn't know what was going on. Doctors couldn't really figure out what was causing it, but it continued to get worse and worse. So after about a year of experiencing this chronic pain, um, my husband and I got married and we knew something was going on medically. We just didn't understand what it was. We had no idea what was coming. And two weeks after our honeymoon, we were driving back from a date night at a burger joint, and my hands became paralyzed in the car. And that was the first symptom that we recognized might be neurological. So we rushed to the emergency room. They couldn't figure out what was going on. This was Junction City, Kansas, so not a lot of great medical testing they could do in that area, and they sent me back home with my hands still paralyzed. So over the next two weeks, I lost the ability to walk, to speak, um, to move my limbs independently, would experience long hours of paralysis where I was unable to move at all, seizures where I would stop breathing, uh, very violent episodes of hallucinations or incoherence. And it just felt like one, I was just losing one function after the other. And the ER doctor eventually told me, we think that you're dying, but we don't know why. And so we wondered if we were looking at a terminal diagnosis within the first few weeks of our marriage. And my husband was actually scheduled at the time to be deployed overseas three months later. When we got the diagnosis of functional neurological disorder, which means that my brain doesn't communicate correctly with my nervous system, we found out that my diagnosis was not terminal, praise the Lord, but it was debilitating and life-changing and something that had very little research done or treatment options available. So my husband, uh, the plan continued with the military. He ended up being deployed, and I faced that first year of disability living on my own.

Sheila Nonato 9:15

Wow. Um can you talk us through sort of the emotions that you were going through? I was reading that part where you were in the ER and the doctor told you this could be life-threatening um or yeah, just a very sort of heavy diagnosis at that time. And thankfully it's not, it's not what he had said. But

Why Nonterminal News Felt Heavier

Sheila Nonato 9:40

um what were the emotions going through you and your husband? You were just newly married. Um, how were you how did you cope with that?

Sydney Anne Bennett 9:48

Yeah, I think my answer might surprise some people, but I actually struggled with depression more after I found out my illness wasn't terminal. And the reason for that is because when the ER doctor told me that I was dying, I actually didn't feel any surprise. I was losing so much function so quickly and in so much excruciating pain that it I felt like I was dying already. It already felt like that. And so when I received the news, I was alone when I received the news because my husband couldn't come into the hospital due to COVID-19. But it was just no surprise. I was also, I think, probably dissociated to a certain extent. Um, I think your mind kind of steps outside of your body for a little while when you hear news like that or when you're in a lot of pain. And it wasn't something I could fully process probably at the time, but I just remember feeling very calm. And then when I told my husband, I had this sort of wrench in my heart because I remember looking at him and thinking, I wanted a whole lifetime with him, but I don't want a whole lifetime of this. And there was a almost a peace that came with the thought that um I would be not not be in pain for long, is what I thought. But I did really struggle with the fact that I was so ready for heaven so soon after a honeymoon, which I thought was going to be opening the door to the best part of our lives. So there was, there's definitely a grief with losing this future lifetime that I thought was going to happen. But I wasn't ready to live in the body that I was currently in at the time. And after we found out that the diagnosis wasn't terminal, I struggled with depression more because I felt like I'm still in the same amount of pain. I'm still experiencing the same amount of physical loss and capacity and dependence. But I'm still gonna feel like I'm dying and I'm gonna feel like that for the rest of my life, which might be a very long time. And it felt completely overwhelming to look ahead to decades of pain, the pain that I was in at that time. So I think those were, it sounds maybe confusing unless you've been in a place in your life where you feel like there's no way forward. There's no way that I could possibly keep going like I am right now. And that's how I felt at the time. And I remember also being angry with myself for not being able to push through better, feeling, you know, weak or feeling like I wasn't fighting hard enough to try to get over this diagnosis. And just a lot of conflicting emotions, a lot of fear as well over how I was gonna do this while my husband was gone overseas and what my life was going to look like. I was I was terrified of every step that was to come.

Sheila Nonato 12:50

And what how old were you when you got married?

Sydney Anne Bennett 12:53

I was 22. So I became disabled two weeks after that.

Sheila Nonato 12:57

Wow. Newly married, and then your husband went on deployment for how long?

Sydney Anne Bennett 13:02

He was supposed to be gone for nine months, and then one month before his return date, his deployment was um extended indefinitely because of the Ukraine-Russian war. So he ended up being gone for almost a year, about 11 months. Wow. In Poland. In Poland and Germany, yes.

Sheila Nonato 13:19

And Germany. Wow. How did you cope with all of that?

Sydney Anne Bennett 13:23

It was really hard. Um, there were a lot of days where I did not think I'll be able to make it through the rest of this deployment. Um, there were a lot of hard medical episodes, you know, needing to call the ambulance or having seizures or paralysis where I'd be stuck on the floor for hours. Sometimes I would avoid eating or drinking because I was scared I wouldn't be able to crawl across the bed or the room to my bathroom. And I just I was living in constant fear and constant pain. And I was trying to go back to school as well at the time because I wanted to have a kind of a purpose for something that could take me outside of what I was struggling with. And I do think that was a really good decision, even though it was extremely difficult. And I think that I looking back now, I see that what I thought was fear and losing all of my independence was God actually forming a different kind of strength in me. And it wasn't strength that I had to give. It was strength that he poured into me because I had none of my own strength left to give. And he brought in wonderful people and wonderful mentors, especially toward the end of that year, who really helped to shape my understanding of God's grace and what faithfulness looks like in suffering. So I look back at that year and I still feel weird inside, um, almost like a trauma reaction to some of my memories from that time. But I also see how the Lord has used that, and I'm so thankful for the ways he has because I think that it's really shaped me into how I approach suffering today.

Surviving During Deployment

Sheila Nonato 15:05

How are you doing now?

Sydney Anne Bennett 15:07

Yes. So I just had my second daughter about seven months ago. And it's interesting, I've I've learned this just through my own experience and talking to other moms with neurological symptoms or um autoimmune disorders. But a lot of neurological diseases actually get better temporarily postpartum. So I don't understand the science behind that. I don't know if we if there's actually any medical research on why this happens yet. But my symptoms got amazingly better, um, not all the way, but drastic improvement after I had my both of my kids. And now they're just starting to come back. So my baseline, my normal baseline is probably a few seizures a week, um, paralysis episodes a couple times a month. I still have pain, but not as constant or intense as it used to be. And I still use a cane or a wheelchair, but it's not as often right now. I know it'll probably continue degressing as I get further away from the postpartum point. But thankfully I'm doing I'm doing really well right now and I'm I'm just leaning into that blessing right now.

Sheila Nonato 16:17

Okay, praise God. Well, um, for those who are not aware of what is FND, functional neurological disorder, can you give us sort of a glimpse into what happens during a seizure? What are you feeling? What happens to your body?

Sydney Anne Bennett 16:32

Yes. So I not many people know about functional neurological disorder. I had no idea what it was until after

What Functional Neurological Disorder Is

Sheila Nonato 16:40

I got diagnosed. And it's interesting because when you look it up, you'll get a lot of conflicting information. And the reason for that is for decades, for almost all of medical history, this has been considered a psychological illness. So it was actually associated with hysteria. And it was originally called conversion disorder, based on Sigmund Freud's theory that mental trauma could manifest itself into physical symptoms or convert itself into physical symptoms. So it's only been within the last maybe decade of research that this has come more under the spotlight and been dug deeper into through medical studies and observation. And every recent medical study has proven that it is not a psychological illness, that it is rooted in the structure and function of the brain itself, that you can track the actual changes in the brain through MRIs. And we're still understanding why this happens to some people. But it's amazing how often we have to fight that stigma of it being psychological just in order to be seen and treated by medical doctors. So that's still something that a lot of people with F and D are facing today. And if you're not understanding how it works, it basically just means that my brain and nervous and nervous system don't send the correct signals back and forth to each other. So because your brain affects everything in your body, obviously, it's it's the one that directs all the signaling. Um, it can affect pretty much every bodily symptom. Uh so any neurological disorder like multiple sclerosis or ALS, things like that, it has a lot of overlapping symptoms with those diseases and it can fluctuate, which is very surprising to some people because you could literally go from seizures, unable to move completely, completely debilitated one day and be walking fine the next, because it all has to do with how your brain is sending those signals at the time. So a lot of people are able to find some sort of baseline management with mobility aids and medication, which is what I'm doing right now to manage my symptoms, but there's no proven cure for it as of yet.

Sydney Anne Bennett 18:56

I see. Wow. Um and so, in terms of, I guess, uh I'm just thinking about in the book, you were describing the um there was uh an episode came during photo day at the university.

Chronic Illness in College

Sheila Nonato 19:10

Can you describe sort of that story and your friend wanting to help you? Um, and you were preoccupied with what was happening to you. And and anyway, can you yeah, can you just sort of get give us a glimpse into what happened that day?

Sydney Anne Bennett 19:23

Yes. So I went back to school during my husband's deployment. This was my sophomore year, week one. And I was coming back, having been a healthy freshman, I was coming back now as a disabled sophomore with a cane and a seizure disorder. And I was like, how am I gonna tell, you know, my faculty, my friends that are seeing me again what's happening to me? I still didn't know all the time how to tell when a seizure was coming on, so I was worried that it would happen suddenly and people would panic or freak out, or I didn't know what to do about that. So God answered that question for me in a very public way. And our school picture day, week one, it was a hot day. We were all outside, every single student, every single faculty member, and I was standing up for our class photo, and I felt my vision start going black. And I had never fully fainted before, but I remember feeling like it's going to happen. I can feel this going to happen. So I turned to my friend, Sue, who was standing next to me, and I told her, I think I'm gonna pass out. And I just fainted in the school picture. So I woke up with a crowd of students and the dean of my school standing over me, trying to figure out how to help me. And I ended up having a seizure immediately after while I was on the ground. So I had a seizure in front of everyone. And I know that sounds like obviously this medical episode, so that's not your fault, and that's not something to be embarrassed about. But at the time, it felt so vulnerable and I felt so exposed to being lying on my back in front of all of my friends and students and faculty and convulsing on the ground in front of them, just completely helplessly. And I felt so embarrassed. Um, and I remember getting up to leave after they were helping me to the side, and my friend asked me, you know, did I do the right thing? I was trying to catch you, and then I had to lay you on the ground, and I don't know if I react to the right way. And in that moment, I realized that I was seeing this medical episode as an embarrassment because I was seeing myself as the main character of my story. And I was thinking, this is such an embarrassing moment for a main character to have. But everyone else was concerned with how their role in the story went. Did they respond the right way? And they weren't seeing this episode as embarrassing. They were seeing themselves as main characters, trying to jump in and see if they could help someone. And that kind of shift. My perspective in that moment to understand that when I'm putting the label of embarrassing on my own symptoms, it's often because I'm building a world that or a narrative that's just focused around myself. And other people are not going to see medical symptoms that way. And that may seem obvious unless you're the person experiencing the medical symptoms, but it's so easy to start kind of wrapping around the fact that you're losing control of your body in a certain way or your circumstances, or you need help in a way that you don't want other people to recognize or feel exposed to. And knowing that other people are actually seeing that vulnerability and they recognize it as human because they feel it in themselves too. And knowing that they're actually blessed when they can jump in and help you helps to reframe what that vulnerability looks like in a public space.

Sheila Nonato 22:59

Yes, I um yeah, when I read that part of the book, it was um I was thinking of wow, that that's a totally different way of looking at things. And you're totally right. Um it's uh I guess when we talk about main character syndrome, I guess we we we uh we think that um the story is us, which I mean it is, but really the author of our story is God, and we we sometimes forget to invite him in. Um but it's just a beautiful way that your friend was her name Jenny.

Sydney Anne Bennett 23:33

Yes. Yes, okay. Jean.

Sheila Nonato 23:36

Jean. When she uh she was wondering if she helped you in the correct way, uh, and you were preoccupied with you know what happened and feeling maybe a little embarrassed. Um, but I guess everyone else, I mean, were was worried about you, actually. Um and how did that sort of that mind shift, how did you get to that place? Um how did you bring Christ into that situation?

Daily Surrender And Christ As Author

Sydney Anne Bennett 24:02

Hmm. That's a good question. It definitely, I think that this is the case probably with all of our, all of our lives as believers, but there definitely comes a point where you might recognize the truth in your mind, but it's hard to feel emotionally what you know to be true. And you might come to a point where you think, okay, I I realize that I need to surrender this to the Lord. And after you surrender it to the Lord, it's not a before and after. And that can make it hard because you feel like, okay, I've surrendered this, and why do I keep struggling with this when I've already given this to the Lord? I already know the promises He gives me, I know what the Bible says about this. But the truth is the Christian life is one of constant surrender. C.S. Lewis talked about how we need to rely on the Lord every day as if nothing has been done before. And in one sense, that can feel like, ugh, like I'm never going to, I'm always gonna struggle with this in my life. I'm never gonna get past this. In another sense, it can be really liberating because God's grace, his faithfulness is new every morning, which means that when you wake up and you feel like I'm back where I started, first you can remember that God's grace doesn't work that way. You never go back to square one. He's always bringing you forward, even when emotionally it feels like you're falling back. And then the second thing is just knowing that that's okay. That's part of the Christian life. And God's grace is such that it actually reaches down into those deepest places with you, no matter how many times you feel like you're facing them again. So when I experienced that moment with my friend and with my classmates, it felt like I needed to kind of reshape my understanding of who I was in my own story. And a lot of times what we're told by the world around us, even people in the church, is that we are the main characters. We feel a pressure to be inspirational, whether that's in disability or in any kind of suffering. We're we're taught that we need to rise above our challenges and overcome it ourselves. And we kind of get this pressure of I'm standing on this pinnacle and everyone's looking at me, and I need to be inspiring in the way that I'm gonna face this struggle. And that's not what the Bible teaches about us. It actually teaches that we're just we're side characters, that Christ is the main character. And there's actually a sort of inverse glory in that because the Bible says that God is glorified in our weaknesses, and it also says that God glorifies us through our weaknesses when he is glorified. So when we stop seeing ourselves as the main character of our story, we first know we're not in control of this, and we never were. So when we feel like, oh my goodness, I've lost complete control, you're no worse off than you were before. You just realize it now. God has always been writing your story, and he's a good author. And we know that no matter how it feels right now, he's going to give us a good ending because we're in Christ and He's conquered the pain and suffering of this world, and he promises that to us. So we can know that we actually are moving through this story with a bunch of other side characters, and it's all centering around the greater picture of Christ and the great blessing and gift that He's promised us in redemption and future glory.

Mentorship And Letting God Use Pain

Sheila Nonato 27:32

Absolutely. Um, and I'm just remembering from your book, I did take notes, so don't be surprised like if I I'm a little bit nerdy with like, oh, page 97, and it is page 97. Um you met a woman named Mrs. Liden Frost. Liden Frost. Liden Frost, sorry. Um, and you wrote uh that she was counseling you and witnessing to you and saying to you, um, it's not your job to bless others through your pain, that it's God's job, that's God's job, and that he's God is looking to you, or sorry, she's asking you to look to God in your suffering and to remain faithful to him. Can you expand a little bit more about that? How did how did you meet her and what lesson did you learn from her?

Sydney Anne Bennett 28:19

Yes, so she's one of the wonderful mentors that I had later on in that year of my husband's deployment. And I didn't know about her at all, um, but I went to one of the faculty members at my school who was also a speaking elder at a local church. And I said, Look, I've never shared this with anyone, but I just found out my husband's deployment was extended, and I don't feel like I can keep going the way I am right now. I need help. And I remember him looking at me and saying, you know, I do not know what it's like to be suffering physically in the way that you are, but I know someone who does. So I'm gonna connect you with her. And that's how I met Lisa Leidenfrost. And she suffered with chronic pain, chronic illness that was undiagnosed for years. She also was a missionary with her husband and their five children overseas in Africa to the Bakway people, where they were translating the Bible into a language that had never been written before. Like they're an amazing, amazing couple and so faithful to the Lord. So when meeting with her was such a gift. And she really just sat with me every single week and walked me through these feelings and these questions and wrestlings that I had. And that point that she made about how it's not our job to bless other people through our suffering, I think is kind of tied to what you asked previously, where we feel the pressure of being the inspiration story. And we feel the pressure often, especially as Christians, of we know that God is going to bring good out of our suffering. So then we think we have to bring the good out of our suffering. We have to be the ones that are creating the silver linings on our own clouds. And there is a heavy burden with that when you are walking through a suffering that feels like it's breaking you. Because there are times where you feel like there's nothing good that can be brought in out of this. I have no idea how God is going to keep his promise to me. And the mercy of realizing that you're not the one who creates the good that God is going to use to bless other people is so liberating because it means that you can reach that dark place in your suffering and not see how God is going to bring good out of this, and God will anyway, because that goodness doesn't depend on you. So realizing that you're not the one who's creating the goodness of your own suffering, but that God has the one but God is the one who's promised that, and he's the one who's going to fulfill that promise. Which means that if you just live in faithful obedience today with the strength that God has given you today, then God actually uses your faithfulness in just looking to him directly, not to anyone else around you, but just looking to him over and over. That's what God uses to create these ripple effects, to bless the people around you, to point other people to him. And you may not even realize how your story is affecting others or how God is using your story until you get to heaven. And you're going to see looking back all of the threads that God has connected through these prayers that you might have thought never were never were answered. But you're going to be able to look back and see how He created this good work through your pain right now.

Sheila Nonato 31:48

So are you talking about sort of the false positivity or like self-help, even kind of that creeps in sometimes in Christianity?

Sydney Anne Bennett 31:57

Yes. So there definitely is a lot of that. There's additional pressure, like what you're saying with self-help, where the prosperity gospel, it's often called, where we think that suffering is caused by lack of faith. So if you're going through a heavy trial or struggle, that it's because you're not trusting in the Lord enough. And that when you trust in the Lord harder, then God will bring you out of that period of suffering. And that creates, oh my goodness, such a heavy burden on people who are struggling because they think it's their fault or that God is punishing them somehow for some sin that they may or may not even know about. And that's actually a false gospel. The Bible says that that's actually adverse to the gospel of Jesus Christ, because if you are in Christ, then He took all of the punishment for your sin. So every sin you've ever done has already been paid for. Every moment of doubt or lack of faith, Christ has already paid for it on the cross, which means that God only shows favor towards you. He only has love for you if you are in Christ. So if you think, you know, God is punishing me for a sin that I don't know about or I just don't believe in God hard enough to get out of this struggle, you're actually saying that Jesus' death and resurrection wasn't enough to purchase God's grace for you. And if if we're putting that burden on ourselves, that's something that we will never ever be able to overcome because we can't make ourselves right with God on our own. It's something that we have to trust in Christ for. And the other thing is that in scripture, it's actually shown that God not only gives suffering to people who are faithful to him, but he actually promises suffering to people who are faithful to him. And if if suffering is actually a result of a lack of faith, that means that Jesus himself had a lack of faith because he suffered more than anyone. So if we're following in the footsteps of Christ, then we are going to face suffering and we also have the favor of God. And those two things aren't contradictory, which means that your suffering is not your fault, and that God is going to bring something good out of it.

Sheila Nonato 34:19

Yes, amen. Absolutely.

Honest Prayer And The Language Of Psalms

Sheila Nonato 34:21

Um, just by reading the book, I as you were mentioning that you kind of poured your heart and soul into it, you can really read it. Like the vulnerability, the rawness, uh, the honesty, you know, crying out to God. I don't know which page this is, but I think you were it was 2 a.m. and you were questioning, wondering, you know, you don't want to waste your pain. I think that's what you wrote. Um what was going on in your mind at that moment? Um, did you feel that God was not as near as you'd like him to be? What what was going on?

Sydney Anne Bennett 34:54

Yeah, I think I knew better at the time um to not say I'm angry at God, or to not not feel like I'm angry at God. But I was angry at everything else. I was angry at myself, I was angry at my body, at my circumstances, at the military for deploying my husband, at everything that was going on. And looking back, I realized that if I really believe that God is in control of everything, that he's the one who's ordained this story for me, that by being angry at everything in my story, I was actually being angry at God, who authored that story. And I felt, I felt so distant from the Lord at that time. I felt that maybe he was punishing me, or that, you know, it felt like my prayers were going no higher than the ceiling. Like, what am I going to do with this pain when I feel like I can't actually even talk to God about this and feel his presence with me in this? And I remember feeling for a long time like I kind of had to resolve those feelings in myself before I came to the Lord in a way that was meaningful or a way that mattered or honored him. And it was through reading the Psalms, especially, that I realized scripture does not, does not say that about our prayers or our suffering. A lot of times as Christians, we feel this pressure of needing to have the right heart attitude before the Lord in order for that to be considered obedience or faithfulness, that we're not allowed to ask hard questions or to be really, really struggling with something or be profoundly sad over a grief or a loss that we're going through. But when you read the Psalms and the prophets and the gospels and the epistles, it actually, the Bible actually gives us language of profound sorrow and grieving over the struggles of this world. The Bible doesn't teach us that faith dulls our hearts to suffering, but it actually gives us a profound capacity for suffering because we know this is not the way the world is meant to be. There's a brokenness here that's not supposed to be here. And the Bible says things like, you know, I forget what happiness feels like. It's in the book of Revelations, or the psalmist says, you know, my bed swims with tears, my eyes waste away because of sorrowing, my bread is dry to me, my bones are drying up. Like these are things that if we said that to another Christian out loud about our sorrow, they would be like, whoa, okay, I don't know if you're supposed to say that. But that's actually in the Bible. That's in a prayer to God. That's a prayer that he's given us as a picture of how we can talk to him. So when you're feeling that distance from the Lord, like I was in that moment, it's not something that you resolve in yourself before you go to God. It's not, I need to create the right heart in myself before I go to the Lord. It's actually getting really raw and honest with God about how he feels so far away from you. Actually, like telling him that, Lord, you feel far from me. I have no idea how you can bring goodness out of what you've given me right now. I'm feeling angry at you. I feel like I'm in despair, that I can't keep going on. And those feelings, the raw feelings that you feel like you can't say out loud, are actually the things that God gives us in his word to take to him in prayer. And so it's not so much overcoming that emotion before you go to the Lord, but going to the Lord and then letting him meet you in that in that emotion and giving you grace in the moment and strength to keep holding on just through that day. That's what faithfulness looks like.

Sheila Nonato 38:36

Yes, I I I love that you quote scripture and then you give your reflection in the book. Throughout the book, there's always biblical quotes, which is amazing. And you do quote, you know, when our Lord was on the cross and he was asking, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Um, we do feel that, and um, in your story, I I mean, I can only imagine what you were going through. Um, and I like I said, it really is helpful to have those scriptural passages to sort of keep us grounded and to remember um that Christ is there, that God, as you said, is the author of our story. And in order for us to know the author, we have to read the book. Um, and so I love that you always keep going back to that and recognizing also that the brokenness of Christ, um, that what you're going through, your own brokenness, the brokenness of your body, you know, Christ has also, his body has also been broken, and how you sort of tie that in, you you gain strength from it, and you you come to him even in your brokenness, which is what you you were saying is and you're I mean, I I I just I'm just amazed at how you've come to this wisdom in your very young age. Um, how did were you always a believer? Or are you part of the brethren by any chance? Because you meant mentioned elder, but I'm just wondering.

Sydney Anne Bennett 40:01

No, so I've always yeah. Um I'm a Protestant. I don't I'm actually not super familiar with the Brethren. Oh, forgive me if it's Oh, sorry. Um yes, I I grew up in a Christian home. My dad's a pastor. I don't remember a time where I didn't trust the Lord for my salvation. Um, so before I became sick, before I faced real suffering in my life, I had all of the theological answers to suffering. You could have asked me, you know, could you talk about the problem of evil as you know, a young teenager? And I might have been able to give you like all of the pastoral answers to it that I had been taught through books and from my dad and my parents. And I had this intellectual understanding of what suffering is and how to suffer faithfully. But of course, that's so different when God actually brings you to a period of suffering in your life. And one of the um best examples of this that I could see probably is in C. S. Lewis, where he's this great Christian thinker and theologian. He's written numerous books defending the faith. He wrote a book called The Problem of Pain, where he actually talks about how do we grapple with the problem of suffering and a good God. Like, how do we reconcile those two things? And he has all of those theological answers, and then his wife dies. And he is sunk into this profound grief and sorrow and starts journaling through it. And the things that he journals come from a place where, if you read them, like you might not know unless you knew the author, you might not know that it was C.S. Lewis, because it doesn't sound sometimes like a Christian could say these things. And the journal was never meant to be published. Um, he ended up publishing it years later after a bunch of his friends recommended his own book to him, knowing that, not knowing that he wrote it. But I'm so glad that he did because I see that that um kind of that shift in a lot of believers. And I felt that in myself too, where we have all of this head knowledge, and then God brings us to a place of true suffering, and we actually are faced with the really personal, intimate decision. And am I going to turn away from God in the suffering, or am I going to turn to him in this suffering? And that's not something that unbelievers just face. That's something that Christians face when they're brought to a point of struggle.

Making lemons out of lemonade: Naming "Jeeves"

Sheila Nonato 42:33

Yes. Um, I I think another uh aspect of the book that I really enjoyed, um, I mean, it's it it can be heavy at times, right? You're going through pain, you're going through chronic illness, chronic pain. Sometimes you're by yourself, your husband has been deployed. So it it's tough. It's um it's it's really it you go deep. And um, like I said, have a box of Kleenex with you. Um, but I also like, you know, the they're little um the these stories that you know kind of bring a smile to your face. Like you're you're talking about you named your cane. So what did you name your cane and why? And um and yeah, describe to us, like what does it look like and all that?

Sydney Anne Bennett 43:14

Yeah, uh, so I did name my cane. My friend helped me. Uh, we named it Jeeves after the butler in PG Woodhouse. So before I got my mobility aids or anything, as my body was starting to fail, I decided that, you know, one of the best ways to fight suffering is through a sense of humor. And I was going to name the different parts of my body. So the things that were failing already felt like they belonged to someone else, like they weren't a part of me. I felt estranged from hands that I couldn't move and legs that I couldn't move. And so I named my hands and my legs. And when they weren't acting up, I wouldn't say, you know, I can't move my leg right now. I'd say, Jacob is slacking off. My leg Jacob is slacking off. So I was I was starting to try. To use names as a way to kind of bring this thread of humor to what I was experiencing. And when I got my mobility aids, it was such a hard step for me to feel like I wasn't surrendering or giving up in using a cane and later on a wheelchair. And one of the ways that I tried to kind of combat that internal struggle was by naming them. Because I thought if I name them, then it feels kind of like a buddy and not like I'm just surrendering to this really awful step that I don't know if I'm ready to take. So my, you know, I got my first cane. Um, my dad actually got it for me. It was just a plastic fold-up cane from Walmart. So my friend helped me name that one too. That was Ichabod, Ichabod Crane. I don't know if you if everyone gets that reference, it's pretty nerdy literary. But um, and then the second one, Jeeves. So I still have Jeeves, and I love him. I still have such an emotional attachment to him. But I have many canes and two wheelchairs now, and I've named each and every one. And it still brings me a lot of joy to refer to them by name because I choose them based on, you know, how I'm feeling in the day, and it makes it feel like kind of a partner and brings in a continual thread of humor to just the daily life. Um, but also feeling like this isn't me surrendering to a medical device. This is something that's actually that's coming to assist me and it's a good thing. Like there, there's humor in this, there's goodness in this. And I actually re recommend to a lot of people when they're scared of getting a mobility aid to name it, because there's just something that happens in your mind and in your emotions when you name something that I think it's just in the way that God creates us as personal beings. It doesn't make that thing, you know, a person, but it brings in some sort of connection to goodness that it wouldn't otherwise have. And did you bedazzle it or I have not been able to bedazzle my canes other than choosing them by color. But I do have a lot of fun colors now, which is great. And then for my wheelchair, I um I got some awesome wheelchair covers that go on the wheels. So it's like a pretty flower, but it it rotates and spirals like as I wheel around. So that's a lot of fun. I love when people comment on those because they're just so fun to have whenever I go go out with it.

Motherhood With Disability And Loss

Sheila Nonato 46:37

Awesome. And so now you have two daughters. How has motherhood changed you?

Sydney Anne Bennett 46:44

That's a great question. So I didn't know that I could have children. I um I thought that I'd be too sick to be a good mom. I couldn't picture in my mind how I would do this from a wheelchair or with a seizure disorder. And I'm I'm thankful that God gave me the gift of motherhood before I was ready for it because it was a surprise to me. And I remember in that moment um feeling like, you know, I'm in the bathroom, I'm holding the pregnancy test, the line just turned pink, and feeling like I didn't realize that God would change the way I am facing this right now. Um, that He would give me so much joy in the fact that I'm already a mother before I was ready for it. And realizing that, you know, I'm gonna move forward into this, this thing that I wasn't expecting, and I have no idea what it's gonna look like, but God's given it to me, and I already feel so much love for this child. Like I knew it was going to be so good, even though I had no idea what was going to happen. And I think that honestly, a lot, probably every parent, even if they, whether they feel ready for parenting or not, is stepping into something they don't know what it's gonna look like. And a lot of parenting, whether you're healthy or disabled, is figuring things out on the job. And then you have to figure it out all over again for each new child. So it's not any different necessarily. When you have a disability, you're just learning how to do different things. And God gives you the creativity and the strength in the moment. And just very simple things like we never got a crib for our kids because there were days that I wouldn't be able to stand up to lift them into it. So we've used floor mattresses and it's been wonderful. And we never had to get a stroller because I'm the stroller in my wheelchair. We have a lap belt and they sit on my lap and my hands are free, and we get all around the like the house like that. My kids love playing with my mobility aids. I don't think they even realize that there's anything unusual yet. My oldest is two and my youngest is six months. So they still they just see this as a normal part of our lives right now. And it's it gives me so much joy to know that they're not growing up with this picture of, you know, a lot of times we feel pressure to put on our kids or to say to our kids, like, you can do anything that you put your mind to. You can, you're strong, you're independent, all on your own. And I'm realizing that disability has given me a gift to give to my children because I'm not strong and independent on my own. And that's something that is that's a place where we all are, but it's something that disability has forced me to recognize, a truth that has been made clear to me through my disability, even though it already existed before. And so knowing that I can tell my children and exemplify to my children in my own life that the Christian life is learning how to be dependent on the Lord. It's learning that the Lord's strength is found in our weakness, that I'm actually able to give them a gift through my own suffering because one day they're going to suffer. They're going to reach a place where they don't know if they can do it on their own or they don't know if they can keep going. And I hope that when they reach that point, they're able to fall back more easily on the strength of the Lord because my own disability has forced me to show that to them again and again.

Sheila Nonato 50:16

Wow. Um, so when you said you weren't sure if you were gonna be able to have children, what was it like when you held your babies for the first time?

Sydney Anne Bennett 50:25

Hmm. It it felt so surreal and there was so much love. And I feel like that's probably just the human answer. Like I I think most moms feel surreal in that moment and all of the love and rush of hormones and everything that's going on at the time. But we actually we lost our first baby to a miscarriage. And when I got pregnant again with my oldest Hadassah, she uh it was it's very hard to be pregnant with F and D. Your symptoms get worse for pretty much the entire pregnancy. And uh I knew at every step, whenever it got extremely difficult, I knew that it was a gift because I had just lost our baby previously. And so I I was given a strength, I guess, in in just knowing that I didn't expect this and this is a good thing, even though it's so difficult. And as someone who is disabled, there is a huge blessing to be able to have the hardship and the beauty side by side in real time in real life, because I think that's that's what we are supposed to think about our whole lives, that there is always going to be hardship and redemption side by side, but we can't always see it. And the amazing thing about parenting is that you can actually see it because the hardship is definitely there, and you go through the sleep deprivation and the toddler tantrums and all of the craziness and chaos of daily life. But then, you know, you have the moment where you tuck your kid into bed every night and they look up at you with their big eyes and you tuck them in and you kiss them, and then you look at them when they're sleeping, and they just look so angelic, and it's like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that I'm actually your mom. And I think that um I heard once that God helps us through macro struggles in micro joys. And I think that's a really beautiful way of looking at it because it can often feel like the struggle is overwhelming. But each of those little glimpses that God gives us throughout the day, which happens so often and so beautifully with parenting, um, become these kind of pillars of God's goodness that we're able to recognize in the midst of all of the chaos and the you know the hardship that can accompany disability or suffering or even just parenting in general, knowing that you have to entrust your children to the Lord because they they don't belong to you. And they um they've been given to you as a gift, and that God has giv has given you this good thing um to point you to him. I think that's just a beautiful picture of his love for us because he he describes himself as our father.

Sheila Nonato 53:20

Yes. Um, and I'm sorry to hear about your first baby. Thank you. Um for I guess, excuse me, for the women who are listening who are military spouses, um, and I myself own one. Um, and uh yeah, I did the pain of miscarriage, it's um a bond uh that women share that they don't talk about. Um but uh for I guess for those who may be suffering in another way um and who who may have their husbands deployed, would you have a word of encouragement

Support For Military Spouses In Suffering

Sheila Nonato 53:56

for them? How how do they get through the the hard times, the difficult times?

Sydney Anne Bennett 54:01

That's such a hard place to be because especially um I think probably any kind of suffering, we feel like it's really hard to find someone that we can be vulnerable with. But if you are going through a struggle or a suffering, I think it's really important to find that community. And especially if your spouse is away overseas, you've lost your primary person to do that with. So the person who knows you best, who's who's vowed himself to you through thick and thin, he's gone and he's far away, and you you've lost that connection. And it can be really easy to kind of just recede into yourself when you're in that situation because you feel like no one will be able to understand me like he does. Um and so I think that pushing against that tendency is really hard through any struggle, but especially if you are distant from close family members or your spouse is deployed overseas. And I think the easiest, the best way to do this is if you're if you're a Christian, hopefully you're involved in a church and going to going to the elders or the pastor at your church and saying, no, this is what I'm going through. I don't know what to do about it, but can you connect me with someone to walk through this with me? And either they have the biblical resources and the understanding and confidentiality to be able to walk through that with you themselves, but then they also know a lot of the other people in the congregation that you might not be aware of that are are walking through or have walked through something similar. And they might be able to connect you to someone who you had no idea is experiencing or has experienced the same things you are. But just being able to find community, even if it's just with one other believer, where you can be vulnerable with each other, know that you can actually say the hard questions, say the hard struggles aloud, and point each other to the Lord in this, in this iron-sharpening iron way, is I think the number one thing after going to God Himself that you should be, that you should be leaning into during a deployment or going through a season of suffering.

Sheila Nonato 56:19

Thank you for that. And um, just to go back again to your book, um, I feel like this is a legacy that you're leaving to your children. Um, and of course, your social media, um, it brings it really brings a smile to my face when I see your videos and your pictures and that part where you found your lap belt. Um, that was so much, that was such a fun, it's it looked like a fun video to shoot um and to share that moment with your

Marriage, Dependence, And Avoiding Idols

Sheila Nonato 56:46

daughter. And also I just want to sort of give a shout out to your husband who, whenever you were having a seizure, an episode, uh, he was when he was there, he would, he would hold you, he would be there with you, um, even if you didn't know what to do, but he was there. Um and you did go through some of the hard things that you you had gone through when there was one time he didn't recognize that you were going through a seizure. Um at that point, um, how did you sort of connect as as a couple that um you know, through that that suffering that you have gone through, the hard, the hard times that you have gone through, how did that sort of make you stronger in in your marriage together?

Sydney Anne Bennett 57:33

Yeah, it's it's interesting because obviously this all of this struggle happened so early on in our marriage. So it felt like we almost had no time to just be a normal couple before we were hit with the illness, disability, and then deployment. So the first, I think 11 out of the first 14 months of our marriage were spent apart. Um and so a lot of the support that my husband gave me happened overseas, it happened long distance. But you're right, like when he was at home before his deployment and after his deployment, he was such a constant presence. And he he understood when I was gonna have a seizure, he learned how to recognize them coming on before I did. So he would actually tell me, like, you're about to have a seizure right now. And I'd be like, No, I'm not. Don't be silly. And then I would have a seizure. So he he got very good at recognizing those symptoms. And he still, when when he's home and I have a seizure, even though I I experience those all the time and I know how to go through it by myself now, he still will sit down and hold me when it happens. And I think that's that speaks so much to his to his love. But I I do think that going through that struggle so early on has made our marriage stronger, because it's not only made us rely and depend on each other more and be extremely vulnerable with each other, because when one spouse is suffering, there's not only the suffering of that spouse, but it leaks into the other spouse too. There's things that they're struggling with uniquely because of your struggle. And God actually is using your struggle to both sanctify you and sanctify them. So it's a gift that he's giving to both of you, something that he's molding into both of you, that he's gonna bring redemption out of. And knowing that, you know, you can rely on your spouse through that season of struggle, that you're being brought to rely and be dependent on each other. But then we were also forced to be dependent on God together as a couple. It wasn't something that, you know, one of us was really growing in and the other person wasn't because, you know, we're going through completely different things. It was something that we really had to come to the Lord together in and learn how are we going to be vulnerable with each other? How are we gonna learn to be dependent on each other and dependent on the Lord when things like this happen? What are the practical things that we can do to serve each other and to be understanding? And I do talk about, you know, our first, our very first argument as a married couple in the book happened when my husband, I was in a seizure and my husband didn't recognize that I was in one. And I was paralyzed and unable to move for several hours. And it I look back now and I'm like, that was so unfair for me to be upset at him because it was so new to both of us. But I had become so confident in his ability to recognize what was happening, where he was just my person. And I knew that he was gonna protect me, that he was gonna be there for me. And I became so dependent on that that when I reached a point where I was really scared and right next to him and he didn't know what I was experiencing, it made me feel more isolated. Um, kind of like this is, you know, the last, the last straw in a way, where I've lost even the person that I'm closest to can't always reach me when I'm in this place. And I think that um, when you're going through something hard, the tendency to rely heavily on your spouse, um, that's a good thing. That's a gift from the Lord. But then there's also a tendency to replace dependence on the Lord through your spouse. So when my husband was deployed or in those early months of marriage, it was really easy to think Colton is my rescuer, he's my protector, he's the one that's gonna help me, and to go to him with my vulnerability. But that's that's a burden that I was putting on him before I even took it to the Lord. And knowing that I actually needed to go to God first, that God was stronger than my husband, that he was the ultimate bridegroom and the one who I had to be dependent on first before I went to my earthly husband. That was something that I had to learn and that made our merit stronger because it really showed us, you know, not to set up our spouse as an idol, but to honor them, that when we love God first, depend on God first, it actually helps us to love our spouse better.

Where To Find Sydney And Closing Prayer

Sheila Nonato 1:02:21

Amen. Um, I'm I'm just again, I'm in awe of your knowledge of scripture, the wisdom that you are sharing with us, your example, your faith, your family, and your online ministry, and now your book. And um I highly encourage people to get this book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Broken: Fighting for Faith When You're Falling Apart. Sydney Ann Bennett, where can uh where can they find you? Where can they find this book? Thank you.

Sydney Anne Bennett 1:02:49

Yes, so I'm on Instagram at the.annegirl and spelled with an E. And I also have a website, SydneyANBennet.com. And then my book, you can find it through my website, through Instagram, social media, or any major online bookstore. So I'd love to connect with you. If anyone reaches out to me, I try to get back to all of my messages. And I'd love to connect with you on socials or or on the website as well.

Sheila Nonato 1:03:14

And the Instagram name is because you you like Anne of Green Gables, is that correct? I'm sorry, it cut out and I missed that. Okay. Sure. So Anne of Green Gables, is that why you chose that name, your Instagram handle?

Sydney Anne Bennett 1:03:31

Yes. So I I went with my middle name, um, which is Anne. And I went with that because I thought if I used my middle name, no one would connect the account to me. And it was so vulnerable. I didn't want anyone I knew to know that I was writing it, which that's not how the algorithm works. So that delusion lasted about two weeks. But I yeah, that was the other reason that it was Anna Green Gables, and I I kind of have found her as a great comfort and joy um through my through my disability and and my story. And so I really resonate with those books. I love them. And it was really fun to be able to connect it with her somehow, too.

Sheila Nonato 1:04:09

Okay, beautiful. Well, our Canadian listeners will appreciate that very much. Um, did you want to close with a quick prayer? Yeah, absolutely. Sure.

Sydney Anne Bennett 1:04:18

Lord, I thank you so much for this conversation today. And I I just praise you, Lord, that you are the author of our stories, that you are writing our stories, that you are in control of our suffering, of um our joys, of our hope in you. And I pray that this conversation would reach the people that need to hear it, that um need to feel less alone in their struggles or whatever trials they are going through, that this would point them to you, Lord, and that you would really make your presence and your faithfulness known to them. No matter where in the season of struggling or pain they are in, I pray that you would just make yourself feel close to them, that you would show your faithfulness to them, that you would give them those moments of joy that really help to bolster our strength when we're walking through something difficult. And I pray ultimately that this conversation, this episode would glorify you. And I thank you so much for this opportunity. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Sheila Nonato 1:05:19

Amen. Thank you very much, and I pray that you continue to bring hearts and souls to Christ to lead us that we will strive for heaven on our time on earth. And uh, God bless you and your family and your ministry, and thank you. Thank you again. This truly, truly is a beautiful book, and I highly encourage everyone to get it. Thank you so much, Sydney. God bless you.

Sydney Anne Bennett 1:05:42

Thank you, Sheila. You as well.

Sheila Nonato 1:05:44

Thank you. Take care. Bye.

Final Takeaway And Next Week Teaser

Sheila Nonato 1:05:50

The path of a Christian is not always easy. There are times in our life when we are called to take up our cross, however big or small they may be. Sydney's story paints a dichotomy of the pain of living with chronic illness and also the peace that can come from having faith in Jesus Christ. In next week's episode, we will speak with Peter Cooney, co-founder of Aku's AI, exploring the question can AI be moral or ethical? Thank you for joining us, Sissers in Christ. Have a great and blessed week, and God bless you. God bless you and your families. Thank you.

Co-Host 1:06:54

And be blessed together.