How Courtney Pray Duke Was Carried Forward by Faith After Being Widowed at 29 Years Old | EP 487

Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that caused us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges. Challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth, and I am your host, Brian Smith. Hey everybody, welcome to Grief to Growth. I'm Brian Smith, and if you're new here, this shows about something that most people don't want to talk about, but desperately need to. We explore what happens when life shatters and whether something meaningful can rise from the rubble. We ask the hard questions, is there life after loss? Can the people we've loved and lost still be with us? And how do we actually keep living when a part of us doesn't want to? So whether you've been walking this road for years, or you're just finding your footing, you're in the right place. My guest today is Courtney Prade-Duke. Courtney is a woman who knows what it means to have the floor ripped out from under her and get back up anyway. She was widowed at the age of 29 after her husband was killed in a cycling accident. Courtney was left with three young children, a shattered world, and a question that so many of us have faced. Now what? Now, in the years of the followed, she's built a life marked not by the absence of pain, but by something she found inside. Her newly released book, And She Got Up, Shattered by Loss, Restored by Jesus, tells that story with the kind of honesty that only comes from someone who has actually been through the fire. Now, Courtney and I do come at grief from slightly different angles. She threw faith deeply rooted in Jesus, and I come through a journey that's taken me into the science of consciousness and the evidence for life after death. But here's what I know. When it comes to the broken hearted, we're all after the same thing, hope that holds up and a reason to get up. In this conversation, we're going to explore what it really looks like to navigate devastation, not with platitudes with the kind of raw, practical faith that gets you through the next 10 minutes. We'll talk about resurrection as something that happens in real life, in real time. And we'll talk about what it means to find purpose when the life that you planned is gone, and about the moment you realize that the love you thought you lost is somehow and possibly still with you. Now, if you've been lying on the floor wondering if you'll ever be able to stand again, this one's for you. And if you want to continue this conversation after the episode, head over to grief2growth.substack.com, and you'll find an article there about today's discussion. Where you can comment and you can connect with me and with other listeners. So let's get started. Let's welcome Courtney Pradeuk. Hi Brian, so nice to meet you. Thank you for having me. I'm so honored. Yeah, I'm really happy to have you here today, Courtney. I was telling you earlier, it seems like my guests kind of come in waves and lately I've been talking to a lot of people who've gone through what you've gone through. So first I want to say I'm sorry for the loss of your husband. And I wanted to honor him by first before we get into everything else. Tell me about him. Yeah, his name was Andrew Prade and he and I met in third and fourth grade. And so we go way back. We were childhood friends and then we became middle school sweethearts. And Andrew was a very remarkable man. He knew what he wanted early in life. He was he was very disciplined. He was he was well respected. He played football in high school and he led worship. And when I when when we grew started growing up a little more in our teenage years, we started leading worship together. And so he eventually we got married at 19 and 20 and we just we knew that we were supposed to, you know, live out this life together. I mean, it was there was no doubt that we were called to be on mission together. And so we did it. We got married and we moved to Atlanta, Georgia and started help start a church. And from there, we had three babies. And but Andrew was I mean, he was my best friend. He was every night from the time before we got married until really the night before he passed, he would always say, don't forget, you're beautiful every day. I heard it every day for 15 years, 16 years. And he he was just a leader and lovable, fun, smart. And, you know, he was such a great dad, too. So we had a son and then a daughter and then another son. And, yeah, I still I still miss him so much. You know, it's it's surreal how you can live life with someone and they're there every day. And you don't even know life apart from them because I did not know life apart from Andrew. And I didn't know who I was apart from him. How one day they're there and then the next day they're just gone. You can't text them. You can't call them. And you know what that feels like. And so many of you listeners can relate to that as well. There's just this this void of of life and, you know, bantering and and getting advice. And so all of that, you know, we we miss him so much still to this day. But he was, you know, grief is just love with nowhere to go. And so we we over the years, we we honor him still. But we you know, we still carry the grief and that's just the love that we had had for him. Well, again, I'm so sorry for your loss. And I can't even imagine how devastating that would be at that at that young age. You did have, you know, your time with him. But that feeling that you must have had, like you said, not knowing life without him, not ever being an adult without him. And how about were your children at the time he passed? They were eight, six and two. OK, wow. And yeah, so he was on a similar husband was it. Andrew was a cyclist on the side like an avid cyclist. I mean, he would ride century rides and he was in tip top shape. And here we are the day before I'll just paint a picture. It's the day before Thanksgiving 2012. And you know what it's like before a holiday. You're just kind of everyone's starting to get ready. You're taking off work. You're kind of clearing the calendar. You're getting the groceries ready and preparing the meal and talking to the the loved ones that you're going to be with and planning. And that's kind of the zone we were in. And Andrew had planned to go on a seventy five mile ride around where we lived and which was very normal for him. Can't imagine that. But it was something he loved to do. And that day was no different. It was a blue sky day. The weather was just like perfect. The leaves were beautiful. And we were living the dream. And life wasn't perfect, but it it it was sure close. Just as far as living our dream life. And we wasn't without hardship or any of that, but we had each other, you know. And just the week before, I remember telling him, I said, you know what? As long as we've got each other, we can do anything. And he was just like, yeah, you know, we went on with whatever it was we were doing. But then fast forward a week later, the day before Thanksgiving, he was walking out the door to go ride and he looked at me and he said, is there anything else I can do to make your day more enjoyable? And I said, no, you've been you've been amazing this morning. He had been helping with the kids so I could go and, you know, get stuff done. And he said, I love you. And I said, I love you, too. And he walked out the door and I remember hearing the garage door close and it kind of stopped me in my tracks because I can I just I normally didn't stand there and listen to the garage door. I don't know why I did that day, but I prayed for him like I always had. You know, Lord, just cover him and protect him and went on with my morning. My daughter and I were painting our nails and I was making lunch for the for the kids. Again, they were eight, six and two. So my youngest was run around in diapers. He had peanut butter smeared all over him. You know, we're getting our Christmas decorations out and all the things. When I sat down and eat my lunch and I get a phone call and many of you know that phone call. It came like a bomb that detonated and there was a frantic lady on the other end of the line that said, you need to get to the emergency room. You're the trauma unit. Actually, your husband's been in an accident. Well, I was thinking he enters indestructible. No, he'll find a way to pull through from this. I know that he's fine. So I tried to text him and call him and his phone wasn't working. And I was just thinking, OK, maybe he broke his phone. Maybe he's in surgery. You know, all of the things just trying to not let my mind go to the worst case scenario and and just frantically. I'm gathering the kids up. We get in the car and we speed to the hospital. And right before we get to the hospital, I get a call from a family member that said, hey, you need to pull over if you've got the kids in the car. Just get out of the car. So I get out of the car on the side of the road. And he said Andrew didn't make it. And everything in me just collapsed. I fell on the pavement. I'll never forget on the side of the road and just got down on my knees. And I just it felt like the world of a turn upside down and shattered and detonated. And I had my three babies still sitting in the car. And I just remember praying, God, I don't know what you're doing. I don't I mean, I couldn't even see clearly. It was like I couldn't hear. I couldn't see straight. The world just kind of became black and white. Like it just kind of lost its color. And I got back in the car and I remember praying and just and I'm a person of faith. I had I've loved Jesus and I've served him my whole life. And and I was like, God, you've got to where are you? You know, in that moment, I was thinking, where are you? And I just prayed. I said, God, give me the strength to tell my babies what happened. And the hardest thing I've ever had to do was just to say, you know, daddy's home with Jesus and there's, you know. So then we go through this whole thing of he died and answering the questions and we're all crying. And we get to the trauma unit there. And I can remember feeling like, first of all, all the eyeballs were staring us down as we walked through the doors, I guess, where it gets around fast. And we walked in there and life, you know, had drastically changed. It was all the sudden we were living in this foreign world that that I couldn't even understand the language to. I mean, it smelled different. It looked different. And I felt I remember leaving the hospital that day thinking I just left half of me in the hospital and I don't know if I'm going to make it. And that's that's an understatement. I mean, it was it was, as you well know, those days and weeks following were just they were excruciating and they were dark. And I truly didn't know if I would ever be able to really live again. You know, like would I ever be able to to see life in color again? Would would I ever be able to taste food again? Would I ever be able to to walk upright with purpose and joy? And I didn't know if it was going to be possible at that moment. Thank you for sharing that. And I know it's difficult, but thank you for sharing for painting that picture for people to understand that how your world can just completely change in an instant. And you know that, you know, you the day that you said it was a beautiful day when my daughter passed away June 24th. I was telling her I live in Ohio. It was a beautiful day. I had gone for a walk that morning. The sky was perfect and everything. And then, you know, my wife calls me from upstairs and Shana wasn't breathing and that leaving leaving her behind and in the hospital, that feeling. So, you know, people it's really difficult for someone to imagine that you don't know, as you said, if you can go on and you use you said the world went black and white. My wife and I said the same thing. Like there's no color in the world anymore. And like people don't people, you know, does the world know that the world ended that day? Right. So that's the way that feels. So being a person of faith and you said you prayed to Jesus, you pray to God. How did this affect your your faith journey? Were you angry? Were you frustrated? Did you feel abandoned? How did you feel? Yeah, I mean, I went through all the all the emotions. I remember feeling like. I got you picked the wrong girl, like I surely someone else could do this way better and they would be way more equipped. And and I remember feeling. Yeah, I had moments where I felt felt abandoned. Like, God, where are you? I had moments where I was wrestling with with the goodness of God. And, you know, for me, I just went in further because, you know, when you lose everything, you it's kind of like you get to this point, you're like, what more is there to lose? And so I remember pressing in further and I would get my Bible and I would open it up in something that I had been reading most of my life. All of a sudden, like it became like this flood of life inside of me. It became it began to like wake up places that it wasn't like I was reading this theory anymore. This was something that now had become like life or death. Like it was like I can remember like, God, if you don't come through for me, I'm not going to make it. If you don't come through for the kids, we're not going to make it. So show me who you are. And I would I would just put it all on the line. And I would see, you know, there's day after day after day in the wrestle in that messy, messy middle of, you know, still living in this disoriented world, wondering if there was anything good left for my life. I can remember reading that that God said he would be near to the broken hearted. And I remember just clinging on to that. Like you, you didn't leave me, you know, and I would read that God says, he says, I'll never leave you or forsake you. And so I began to just like hold on to that as if it were my life, because it was. And for me, that is how that is how I began to to walk a day at a time and just clinging on to these promises. And I really did see miracles begin to unfold, things that I couldn't imagine that I would live through or watch my babies live through. Yeah. But I remember laying, I would put my head on my pillow every night, every night, and those early days, those early years. And I remember just I would look back over my day and I would just think, whoa, we did that. God, you came through for us. I held you to it and you showed up. So it's like you might have felt abandoned, but God's like, I've been here the whole time and I'm never going to leave you. And I'm going to hold your hand until like you get up and stand. And then I'm still going to hold your hand and walk with you. But I just love that, you know, we feel like we feel like our world is imploded and that everyone leaves and everyone. And some do, you know, some some can't handle the grief and the heartache and the pain. But for me, I had so many, not so many. I had a handful of like warrior friends that showed up for me and they would come in and they would help with the dishes. They would help with bedtime with the kids. They would enter in unafraid. They were they they were called to our family and they they walked into the valley of the shadow of death with us. And and they helped lift my head, you know, and they would help remind me of what's true because our minds naturally want to go to, you know, the negative. We tend as human beings to err on the side of the negativity and to just put that on repeat. And so I had to find a new way of thinking and a new way of putting the truth on repeat. And I think that that was the fight for me is like, OK, what's true? We're going to have to like retrain, you know, retrain this battered and bruised brain, right? But filling my mind with truth, with the word of God was like the life source for me. And I had amazing friends who, like I said, were unafraid to enter in to the pain and the mess and just kind of the the thing that makes people want to run. And they came and they sat right there with me. And and they're still just, you know, very near and dear to me to this day. Andrew passed away that was 13 years ago. You know, and there are some days that, you know, it feels like a blink and then some days it feels like forever. Yeah. And it's so it's so wild how. Yeah, time just gets distorted. Yes. Yeah, I definitely understand that. And, you know, it's interesting because you say some of the same things that I might say, but in maybe different language. You talked about some miracles that the God performed for you. Can you give us some examples of what one of those would have been? Yeah. So there are, you know, things from little things like little miracles. Like we we went to the grocery store that day. We put we were able to get food in the pantry and make dinner. And, you know, and everyone got in bed that night. I mean, little things like that all the way up until I remember nine months after eight, nine months after Andrew went to heaven, we I was really feeling a stirring like we needed to move. And the thought of moving, you know, now without a husband and three small children felt so overwhelming. And I remember one day I was going out to the bus stop to meet my kids off the bus from school. And I was just like, God, I need your help. Like, I need you to show me what to do because I don't know what to do and I don't know where to go, but I'll go anywhere. I mean, I just I was so burdened for others that were hurting. I was beginning to to think I wanted to spend my life on behalf of the hurting. But I didn't know what that looked like. And I was still in such a fog. I mean, I still could hardly see my hand in front of my face. So I pray this very specific prayer on the way out the door that day and I I was like, God, will you just make it so clear? Like make it like right in the sky and where I need to go. And so I walked out to my driveway. I walked out to my mailbox. And I opened the mailbox and out fell this leather bracelet and it like hit the pavement because it fell out of a little like a letter that I opened. And I was like, oh, that's weird. And so I picked it up in on the bracelet. It said passion. And the lady that wrote the letter, she said, I don't, you know, I know that we don't we don't know each other. I know you don't really know what this word mean. You might know what this word means, but I don't. I just feel like I was supposed to send you this today. And little did she know I had been going down, driving an hour south down to Atlanta. So we were like an hour north northwest of Atlanta at the time. Well, I had been driving down to Atlanta and I'd been attending Passion City Church to just like go and just I found it was like a place of healing. I can't explain it any better than it was just like a respite for our family. And so anyway, but nobody really knew that because, you know, we were serving at this church. And but the weeks that I wasn't singing, leading worship, we would drive down to passion. OK. So if that wasn't as clear as day that we were to move to Atlanta, I don't know what was. And it was just the timing was I mean, it was my mouth was like on the floor. And I knew that's where we were supposed to go. So we started looking at houses. You know, we would drive the kids down to Atlanta. We would just drive around. And I would just be like, OK, God, show us where to go. And I, you know, we eventually found our home. But, you know, when I look back and making a big move like that is something that I wouldn't have thought that I'd be able to do. I'm like three small kids on my own. But I really there there were just so many miracles along the way of God just pushing us through like this is the next step. Just do the next thing, you know, take the next step. You don't have to see the whole, you know, your whole future. You don't have to know what you're going to be doing next week. Even you just need to take the next step. And I feel like there were miraculously divine moments of God enabling us to do that, which we could not do on our own. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And in my language, we call those signs or synchronicities that that happened that, you know, that the universe, God doesn't abandon us. It's not all random. There is there is order to it if we can just look for it. And your your faith, you know, people can buy some people. We have a choice when something like this happens. We can choose to turn into our faith or we can choose to turn away from it. Some people do. Some people say, well, if this happened, there cannot be a God or if there's a God, he's not a good God and they will get angry and turn away. You chose to lean into it. You know, you chose, OK, this is what I'm going to do. And you ask, you know, you ask for the signs and you received. Mm. Yes. And, you know, in that is where I tasted the goodness of God. It was in those in the worst moments of my life, the places where I could have said, God, like, you're not good. And how could you be good if this happened to me? Right. Well, we were never promised. Nobody was ever promised this easy life. You know, it is full of suffering and hardship. And that is part of life. But God in the middle of that is what rerouted everything for me. Mm hmm. I saw his goodness. I saw his compassion. I felt, you know, his nearness and his presence. And it leads led me and guided me and gave my kids this unspeakable peace. And it eventually, you know, the color begin to come back, begin to come back. And eventually, you know, we found ourselves around the table, which we didn't know we could ever face. But the table, you know, with that empty chair, you know, we it's like we were given the grace to sit around the table and to laugh again and to enjoy food. And, you know, this none of this happened overnight. But it was in that that I began to see the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. And sometimes you've got to wait for it. But it doesn't mean it doesn't mean that God's not good. He's always good. He doesn't change. Our circumstances change, but he never changes. And so I anchored my life in that unchanging truth that he wasn't going to fail me. And he didn't fail. He didn't fail me on November 21st. And he hasn't failed me yet. All these years later. Has it been hard? Yes. Yeah. But have I had to walk alone? No, I haven't. Yeah. And that's another thing that I, you know, I've worked with my clients on and I try to tell people it's like we have to anchor ourselves in the truth because our brains are designed to go negative to to focus on what we're missing, to focus on what we lost and and to focus on all that stuff, as opposed to anchoring ourselves in the truth that we are cared for and we are loved and things are going to work out. But that's that's the faith part of it. Not that not that everything is going to go smoothly, but that we'll somehow be able to get through it, you know, with the strength that we that we can draw. And so I love the way that you put that. And you did say, because I was going to ask you to describe the process of the of the color coming back, because people seem to think a lot of times, well, one day I'm going to be healed and one day this will be over. But you said it didn't come back all at once. Yeah, it didn't come back overnight. You know, there are many days I wanted to hit. I wish there was like an inject button that I could just like, like catapult myself 10 years down the road or into another place that wasn't this place. And here's the thing. If anyone listening is in the middle of the hardest time in your life, I just want to encourage you that it's not going to stay there. You weren't meant to stay in that valley forever. And our healing, it can happen overnight, and especially like with the Lord, he can heal you overnight. But most of the time is that process. Yeah. And for me, it was it was a it was a process. And that process was very. It's not what I would think it would be. You know, it looks like. Three steps forward. It's like, oh, we're getting momentum. And then you just feel like you get, you know, slap back again and back to the start. And then you would get, you know, you would move a little further down the road and then you would realize that, oh, we've now that we've we're we're we're growing these muscles because what's happened is there's been a severing. When you lose someone you love, it feels like you've been cut in half, like like you've been paralyzed. And now you're learning to rework these muscles and these tendons and discover, you know, really who you are without them in your life and how to live again and how to how to do the everyday tasks. You know, without them. And that is, you know, it's like we would be and I'm just going to go back to something simple as food because I think anyone that's lost someone can really relate to this. Is like, so Andrew was a chef or not chef. He was our homemade chef, but he was a he was a very good cook and I'm not a great cook. So food was a source of grief. Like it was just one of those things that I was like, oh, look here. You know, I just don't have it in me to do this today. But I can remember and I kind of touched on it earlier, but I can remember, you know, slowly, slowly, but surely we would be sitting around the table having faced that that loss. And I would think like, oh, we've done this a few times now. Or I would drive to, you know, the kids ball games alone and thinking like, you know, the first few times it took me out. I mean, it was so hard to face it and to go alone and to try to be joyful and cheer them on. But then, you know, it's like that muscle memory of, OK, this is the life I've been given. We have one shot showing up for them when it was hard. And then you look back and you're thinking, oh, I don't feel like I've been punched in the gut anymore. I was able to go cheer for my son. And yes, I feel it. I feel the sting of sadness, that splinter of sadness is there. It's always there. But the joy, the joy began to come back. And I could remember thinking that I've got a future that my life did not end the day that Andrew left this earth. There was more and there was not just more for me, but more for my kids. And but going through that is not linear. It is a very jagged, messy process. And but it's also filled with so much grace, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so when when Andrew passed, you were, you know, you were still young and you have these three small children. What about like, I know now you're married and you have another child since then. So how did that, what was that process like of saying, I'm ready to go back out into the romantic world? Yeah, well, I never, I wasn't like, oh, I'm ready to date again. I never really got to that point if I'm honest. And I wasn't like looking for it and not that there's anything wrong with that. Because Andrew and I, we fulfilled our vows to each other until death do us part. But that was something really hard for me to wrap my head and my heart around because I still felt married. I had been with Andrew my whole life. I hadn't known anyone else, you know? I hadn't dated anyone else. And so for me, it was like, I knew that I knew I wanted to have that companion, but I also knew, or I didn't think I was gonna be able to love again or even want to open up my heart to anyone else again because the reality was I still felt married to Andrew. So it was a process for me and it took a mutual friend knowing John and knowing me individually to say, hey, I just think y'all should know each other. I think you should just go to dinner or coffee or whatever, you know? And I kind of joked and I said, you can give him my email. And, but anyway, eventually we started talking, but it was a very slow process for me. It was like, I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to just be like, I'm all in, you know, right out the gate. It took like, you know, like texting, getting to know each other. And then when John came into town, cause he is a, he was a musician. And so he was traveling at the time. He's not anymore, but he was traveling when he came through Atlanta, you know, we would go on a date. And anyway, he eventually moved a couple miles away just so that we could be in the same space for a little while. And then once we knew that we were gonna get married, I'm fast forwarding a lot, but once we knew we were gonna get married, then that's when I introduced the kids to him. But it was just so, so redemptive to be able to open up again and to allow God to do a new thing because that's what was happening, you know? It was, it wasn't, you don't replace a person, but God can restore a loss. And here I am now learning now all these years. This was four years after Andrew passed. I'm now learning a little more gracefully how to hold both joy and sorrow. And I'm at my wedding and we have all of our children around us, you know, it wasn't the life we had planned. It wasn't that wedding you have in your dreams. You know, it was like we had altogether five children in our wedding and, but God was doing a new thing. And it felt like there was just, there was joy rising from the ashes. There was a life kind of beyond this devastation. But I'm saying my vows, you know, crying, you're so happy, but there's grief that's all intermingled. The joy and the sorrow is just, it's all right there. And I've just learned over time that that is such a gift because you can't know joy, real joy, unless you've known sorrow. Yeah, that's true. And so it's learning how to walk with both of those things, but that is one area of restoration in our lives. And I've just seen my kids there now. I had my older two are in college and I've got a 16 year old. So the two year old is now 16 and he's driving. And then John and I, we had a baby boy and he is now eight. So, and you know, he's just a tangible reminder every day that there is more than just because you walk through complete and utter devastation and your whole world is shattered. There is more life ahead, that it is not gonna stay. You were not meant to stay in this valley full of ashes. You were meant to rise in the way that I've done that is by the hand of Jesus that took me up. And he said, you're mine, you're mine. And he never left me. And he gave me the strength to stand and now walk in this life of victory that I've never dreamt that I could. And I just, you know, I'm able to help others and I really do think that our suffering has a superpower because as you know, anyone that's walked through loss and grief and heartache of any kind, it really is this like secret tunnel in life that I didn't know it existed until I walked through it. And it's like, oh, this is what people have been going through from the beginning of time that I'm just given, you know, this insight into, but what that does is changes your lens, it changes your eyes, it changes the way you see people and it's the way that you see pain and suffering. And it really can be a superpower if we let it, you know, because you can speak into places and you can talk to people in a way that you couldn't before. And so in so many ways, my grief and my pain and my suffering has transformed me into someone that I wouldn't be able to be had I not have gone through that. And I just thank God for that, I thank God for that. And it's such a strange thing, you know, to say about suffering, but you can still miss and love the person you lost, yet still have the permission to get up and walk a life of victory and purpose. Can I just say that word and highlight that word? Because I think that there is purpose on every single one of our lives, no matter what difficulties we've walked through and what pain and heartache we've endured, there is a purpose, a God given purpose on every one of our lives that I believe when we wake up and we choose to walk in that, God will do miracle after miracle and he will do more than we could ever dream or imagine. And I feel, and I believe that's what I've walked in in the past 13 years of my life. Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that because I think it's really, I have a friend that just recently lost her husband and, you know, people are so well-meaning, but they'll ask you things like, well, when are you gonna be ready to date again? Or, you know, you'll find somebody else. And it's really important for us that are trying to help people, that it's different for everybody. You're probably not gonna get excited about dating. And I can only imagine, you know, this is the only person you've ever been with. It's like, it does feel kind of like a betrayal when you say, I'm gonna do this again. But you said something I think very, very important there. When we take our wedding vows, most of us don't really think about what we say. We say till death do us part. And so when a person has done that and that one person is gone, those vows are, they're fulfilled. The time has been made. So it's not cheating. There's nothing wrong with it, but that there's a part of our brain, I think, that says there's something wrong and we have to learn to, again, speak the truth to ourselves. Yes, yes. And just remember that, you know, not that we need permission to get up and live our lives to the full, but sometimes we do. You know, we kind of feel like, I need to remember that I did fulfill my vows and that I'm, you know, I am being, I'm not, you know, I am being faithful and it's okay to open up. It's okay to begin to open up your heart again. We're made to love. And, you know, not everyone, you know, will get married. And let me just say this, marriage remarriage doesn't fix all the problems. So also let a free the listener that you're thinking, I don't know if that, you know, it's okay, you know, to not get remarried because it will increase some of the, some of the difficulties in some ways, especially blending a family, but it's, it's my experience has been, it's so worth it. You know, it's so worth it to have someone to love. And it's, I like to say I have a husband in heaven and husband on earth and like, and seeing it as possible. And it's not, it's not letting Andrew go. You know, because people think it's like, okay, we'll have to switch from this person to that person or this person is a replacement. It's not, it's not bad at all. And I hear from what you're saying, and you're still have that love for Andrew. He's still part of your life. He's still your father's, your children's father. And so what's your, what's your children's, you know, cause one of them was very young when he passed. So what are their relationships like with Andrew now? Um, they, you know, my youngest doesn't remember him. So that has its onset of challenges of he's just like him. So I have to tell him these things. So his memory of his dad is through what I tell him. And I think it's important that we, we keep the memory alive and we remind them of the little things like when he'll make a little movement, I was like, oh, your dad did that same thing, you know? And he likes to hear that. And that's good. It's good for them to know those things. And, um, and then my older two though, they were close with their dad. And so that has been, um, also uniquely challenging. And we're finding that through every kind of life stage, we go every milestone and, and next big thing that happens in life, there's grief that comes back up. Absolutely. And, um, I think that we're learning that that rhythm is, um, it's a normal thing to feel and it's healthy. And I think that when it first started kind of happening, you know, you're thinking, oh, I'm three, four, or five years out, I'm good now. And then, and then they graduate high school and then you just, you feel the gut punch all over again. You're like, why am I feeling this? I thought I was further along than I am. Well, I just want to encourage you that you are further along than you, than you think you are. And just because you feel that the gut punch that comes with those monumental, you know, milestones in life, it doesn't mean that, um, just because you feel that it doesn't mean that the, um, ah, I lost my train of thought. It doesn't mean that you've been set back. Or, um, it just means that that's a healthy part of growing and grieving and, and, and becoming, you know, it's this new life, not necessarily one you handpicked, but one that you are equipped to walk out and, and there is grace all day for those things. So I just, you know, it is a healthy, now it's kind of like we, we, we almost anticipated, um, the grief at the, at the joyful things, right? But we're able to hold on and not lose the joy in the middle of it. It's kind of like, yeah, this is the dance. This is, this is what healthy grieving looks like. And it's okay to feel those quote unquote setbacks. It's really not. It really is. Your muscles are still, you know, you're strengthening and, and it really is just, um, you're feeling that love with nowhere to go. And, um, but my kids, um, uh, I'm so proud of them and, and the way that they love and honor their dad, Andrew, and that they also, um, love and have made space for John. And John is such an incredible, um, earthly dad to them and, um, has filled in, you know, a lot of gaps along the way, but it, you know, it's still just, um, it's just this, this dance that we all have to have just grace for, you know? And, you know, it's interesting as we're, as we're talking a lot of times in life, we, we feel like it's either or it's either grief or joy. It's either you're, you know, you're married to Andrew or you're married to John, you know, and it's not, we don't have to make it, we can't make those choices, right? So like even your wedding day, I think you said was like a perfect example. It's, it's one of the most joyous days of your life, but it's also going to be filled with grief because it brings you back to that space. I can imagine your kids, you know, graduations and when they get married, all those things, those are days that are filled. You're going to be, your heart's going to be filled both emotions at the same time. That's right. And, and what I'm learning and what I've learned over the years is there is space for both. Yeah. Yeah. Now I love the title. I know you've written a book and I don't think we've talked about it yet, but you've written a book. I love the title of your book. People tell people what the title is and why you chose it. It's called, and she got up and this is my story of all that I've, I've walked through when my life shattered. It's a firsthand account of me walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And God meeting me right in the middle and really bringing me up. But the thing is like, this is not just my story. This is all of our story. And this is what's possible when we just surrender our lives over to God and say, I didn't plan this. This is, I'm disappointed. But God, I'm trusting that you have more life ahead for me and that you are not done writing my story. And so I, my hope is that whoever picks up this book and reads it, that they would find themselves in the story, that they would find their own story within mine and grab onto the hope that is available to every single one of us. There is no one too far gone. There is nothing that's off limits. There is no one that has been pushed aside to where you cannot grab hold of this life and get up and walk in purpose and victory. So I really cannot wait to share it. This is something that has been on my heart to write for over a decade and I fought it. I said, all the excuses and there is in the book to say, I don't have a text, I can't do this. And I just felt like, God is saying, write the book. And so I got serious about it and I wrote it. And it took about three years to get to this point now to where I get to share it with the world. And I can't, I just can't wait. It's raw, it's relatable, it's real. And we go on a journey in this book and it's broken up into four different parts. It's the breaking, the making, the rising and the sending. Because the beautiful thing is what we go through, we don't have to stay there, but we get to turn around and help someone else. There's so much purpose in what we go through. So yes, I can't wait to share it. Yeah, it's awesome. And I'm glad that you answered the call to write it and to share that because when you tell your story, I asked you to start out by telling, I go back to that place too with you because I know what that's like, I felt that loss. And I know that feeling that people have like, it's over. My phrase is I say, we are planted not buried, but you feel like you've been buried. And when something is buried, it decays, it doesn't come back. When we bury things, we put them away because we don't expect them to come back. And what it is though, as you mentioned earlier, there's purpose even in the pain and we can take that and you did, you chose and you relied on your faith. You said Jesus helped you, but you reached out, you held his hand and you held onto your faith and that led you through, but that is a choice. And sometimes people feel like I don't have a choice in this and we absolutely do. We don't have a choice in what happens to us, but we have a choice in how we respond to it. And you've actually, you're showing that way. And I love you also said earlier, and you're saying some, a lot of the same things I say, it's like the path has not opened us like all the way out. It's not a wide, straight shot. It's a bending winding path and we're in the dark and we've got a flashlight and we can see a few feet ahead, but that's, we have to rely that this is enough. And that's exactly what you've done. Yes, and I just, it's possible, isn't it? You know this, like you're living it too. Like it's possible to walk this impossible life. Yeah, yeah. And it does, I know it feels impossible. I, so anybody for people that are listening, when you say it feels impossible or you say, you don't understand, my circumstance is different. I mean, I offer up Courtney, right? 29 years old with the same person for your life, three small children. I had to feel impossible to you that you were gonna get to this point. Hmm, how did I feel it was possible? I mean, I would imagine it felt impossible to you. Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, if someone said Courtney, don't worry in 12 years, here's where you're gonna be. Oh, I couldn't fathom it. And I really, I've seen, I mean, I just wanna say again, if you're in those early days, years, and maybe it has been 13 years and you're still wondering when, you know. Yeah. When the possibility is gonna break through. I just wanna declare that today is the day. Like as you're listening to this, that you would walk and break through of a new day and a new beginning. The beautiful thing is that every day we have the opportunity to start over again. We have a new beginning every single day. And with that, like you said, we have a choice and no one's gonna make us do it. But I will say walking by faith, walking in the unknown, walking when you don't see it and you don't feel it. One step at a time, God is gonna be faithful every single step of the way to bring you into a life of possibility that looked like dead in road, that looked like a red light forever. The light's gonna turn green and the fog will lift and the color will come back. And there is more life ahead. Yeah, wow. All right, I think that's a great way to end. And Les, if there's anything that I didn't ask you that you'd like to talk about or that you wish I had asked you, anything else you'd like to share with the audience? No, I mean, we could talk all day. But no, I just really believe that no one and nothing, and no one is too far gone. Yeah, I love when you said that because it doesn't matter if it's been 13 years and you still feel like you haven't started growing yet, today is the day, right? That's it. And I know you talk about resurrection and when people think about resurrection, we think about Jesus rising from the physical death. But there's a perspective that says every morning is a resurrection. Every time you open your eyes, it's a new chance. So you can start today. And every journey starts with a single step. That's it, that's right. So grateful. Courtney, I know that you have a website. So if people wanna reach out to you, that people know how they can reach you and also remind people of maybe your book again. Yeah, the name of my book is called And She Got Up. And you can get it wherever you'd like to get your books. And my website is CourtneyPrayDuke.com and we can stay connected there. There are links for where to buy books and there'll be news and all kinds of things where I'll be speaking. But I would love to have you guys on board and let's do this thing together. Courtney, thanks for being here today. You're quite an inspiration. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much, Brian. It's an honor. Plan, be good, wish you the most! Alright then, alyone. See you once again. surgea.