The Intimacy of a Good Father ~ Melanie Sunukjian Ep. 168

What does it mean to truly see yourself as a daughter of God?

In this heartfelt conversation, Robin Blumenthal sits down with Melanie Sunukjian to explore how our relationships with our earthly fathers can shape the way we experience God as our Heavenly Father.

Melanie shares her own journey of recognizing what was missing in her relationship with her dad, seeing his willingness to grow, and learning to recognize the ways God has been loving, nurturing, and caring for her all along.

Together, Robin and Melanie talk about father wounds, the power of healthy community, women in Scripture, and the difference between constantly doing for God and learning to simply sit at His feet.

If you have ever struggled to understand what it means to be loved as a daughter, this conversation is an invitation to discover the intimacy of a good Father. 

Stay Connected with Melanie at www.melaniesunukjian.com

Instagram: @melaniesunukjian

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Transcript

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Sometimes we can't even. We need our eyes to be open, the eyes of our hearts to recognize when God is loving us as an intimate heavenly Father.

Hello, and welcome to Living the Reclaimed Life. Today's podcast will be meeting with Melanie Sunukian, and she is going to be sharing with us about the intimacy of a good father. My name is Robin Blumenthal, and I'm the co-host of today's episode.

We would like to thank our sponsors for today's episode, Tim and Andrea Looney from the Looney Advantage at Realty Executives. They've been serving families across the Tucson area for over 24 years, helping people buy and sell homes with care and integrity. Tucson friends, you can find them by searching the Loony Advantage on Facebook.

My name is Robin Blumenthal, and I'm one of the co-hosts of Living the Reclaimed Life. On today's podcast, we have a very special guest, Melanie Sanjunkian. Hopefully, I got that close enough, right? But Melanie has joined us a couple years ago, and she a couple years ago she shared about women in the Bible and told the story of Leah. And since that time, Melanie has continued to be on a journey exploring the intimacy of a good father, and so we've asked Melanie to join us again today and talk a little bit about where she has been in that journey. So thank you for being here, Melanie.

Happy to be here, Robin. Thank you.

So tell us a little bit about the last couple years, or even even prior to that. What got you thinking and pondering and researching on this whole idea of intimacy of a good father.

Well, as we've acknowledged, God always weaves these threads through our lives, and we don't always see how they intersect until later on. But really, we moved out to Tucson about seven years ago. I thought I was coming to help caretake for my dad. He had had a stroke. He and my mom have lived out here for over 30 plus years, and actually, he ended up passing away before we got here. And so we've been here with my mom as in her new widowhood, and she's actually doing quite well. But I think I started, you know, thinking about my relationship with my dad and reflecting on that. And I went back to the early days when I was giving his at his celebration of life. When I was sharing with people, I 

I went back to, gosh, 25 years before that when I was in college, and my I called my home, and my mom told me that he had been hit by a drunk driver, and it was this whole nine days. I flew home. He was on, you know, he had that tube down his throat for nine days, and when they finally pulled that out, he said the first words he said to me was, "I want you to know that I pray for you and your mom and your brother every day, and it was so meaningful because he wasn't a big words guy. He didn't really communicate a lot of his love through words, and I realized after reading that book, the Five Love Languages, that I'm a words of affirmation person, and so I started reflecting on how that felt like it was missing, and that intimacy with my dad, even though he was a good man and you know faithful, loved my mom, worked hard-all of those things that that generation defined as a as a good man-I went into my master's degree program in communication studies, specifically family communication, interpersonal communication, and my master's thesis ended up being father-daughter communication, and I was really looking to understand the intimacy and how fathers can show intimate love to their daughters. And it was interesting because a lot of my research, I noticed I had to dip into because communication is a unique area of study. You dip into sociology and psychology, and so many of the studies were on negative father-daughter interaction, as you can imagine. And so it's kind of a unique place to go of learning that that intimacy happens with verbal and non-verbal forms of communicating warmth and connection. And and I ended up, gosh, this would have been. 

I'm going to date myself here. 1996. No, that's when I graduated college. 98, 1998. I defended my thesis. Happened to land on Father's Day weekend, and my dad and mom drove down. And I started with the story I just told you about his recovery from. We almost thought we were going to lose him, and his recovery from that, and how I had seen him grow after those nine days of being forced to kind of think through his life in that hospital bed, and how I'd seen him grow in his showing of love towards me, and. And he sat in the back of that classroom with tears streaming down his face, and I think that may have been one of the first times I've ever seen him cry. And so, just seeing him in the back half of my life try to grow, even if he came from a super quiet dad or from the south, or like had certain kind of ways that he did things, or maybe covered up emotions, or whatever. 

His willingness to to try to grow was helpful for me to see, and yet I still now even in counseling recognize that there's some absence of intimacy from my dad, which of course we know reflects on how we treat, or what we expect from, or how we view God the Father. So that's kind of a starting point. I don't know if you want me to keep going, or you have other lots of questions. Oh,

that that was wonderful. I appreciate how you shared that, and and and I wonder. I guess a couple questions come to mind. So your dad, as he sat in the back of the room and he listened, do you feel like what you shared then changed how he parented, how he fathered going forward? I mean, certainly we don't. It's hard to change the whole of who we are, right? Of our love language that we tend to show or receive to change that in its entirety, but how do you think him hearing that changed both for let's start with for the good. What were some

things that you think were beneficial from that time? Yes, I do think he became a bit more expressive compared to when I was younger because I don't really have memories of like crawling up into his lap and feeling held and cuddled by him. I don't. 

I don't have those memories, and I don't think it happened a lot. He wasn't very, you know, physical, and so I think fast forward. I don't know if that grew as much as him trying to kind of meet me where I was at, I will say when we were still in California, probably one of the peak moments of recognizing, wow, my dad is growing. He is wanting to change and show his care for me more. We were on a phone conversation, and I was grieving something that was happening in my life that was very difficult. And I have been, you know, honest about this before it had to do with my marriage, and it's been a hard marriage. We're committed, and both of us love the Lord. But it's just been a hard marriage-not just like the regular marriage is hard, but kind of added things on top of it. And I was kind of crying to him about it and sharing my hurts, and and I think maybe even asking him to like, like step in a little bit, maybe reach out to my husband and talk with him through things. And he had always felt like, oh, I don't want to get involved. But there was a point where there was quiet on the other end of the phone as I was sharing kind of the my brokenheartedness, and I just heard like muffling, like a muffled sound, like maybe he would, you know, and he was actually crying, and he was crying in empathy, and he said something to the like he wished that he could kind of take on my pain. 

His heart hurt that my heart hurt. He said something along those lines, which was language he would never really have used, and I wouldn't say he was the most empathetic guy. So yes, I did see him grow, and I will say, I think it's much easier to sort of let the hurts go and forgive people when they will when when you see them still trying to grow, still making efforts to love well, to you know put put others above themselves, and so that's part of the reason I think I don't have a lot of kind of resentment or frustration with my dad because he was making strides even into his older age and doing things and expressing himself in ways that would not have been comfortable in his family or in his life, so so yes, I am thankful to say I did see some of that growth.

Well, and I would imagine that there are people listening who who might say that even even if they had mentioned that to their dad, there might be no no remorse or no change, no growth, or they might be so estranged from their dad for for maybe even some great reasons. Maybe there has been abuse, and they don't have that opportunity, or perhaps their dad is no longer here on this earth. So I would imagine that in your studying and looking through the Bible, you've seen that, you've experienced that. And what is some what is some hope, or or some advice, or that you might be able to share with our listeners?

Well, I think yeah, we're all on this journey, and we've all experienced. I know you know a lot about this, Robin. Trauma, learning a lot about there's the the traumas where we could have been hurt by our dads with. Like significant abuse, where everyone can point out that was wrong, that was hard, that was painful. But then there's also the traumas that are like absences of good things, right? Where that's more of my experience, and the counselor I've been going to at the Joshua Tree here in Tucson has said, oftentimes the traumas that are harder to name and harder to kind of understand can be can take longer to get over, and so that's a lot of what we've been exploring. Those trauma A, the absences versus trauma B, the bad things that have happened to you, and so both of those are difficult. And I think all of us, to some degree, have experienced both, particularly at the hand of fathers, those father wounds that we talk about, and I think it's why part of the reason it's important that we acknowledge that God is our heavenly Father. 

Like I think there's a there's a specificness to the gender that He is that He describes Himself because really fathers are supposed to be the head of the family; they're supposed to pour out, you know, the heavenly Father's love through them. And I think what I've been doing and encourage others to do is really try to focus on my identity as a as a daughter of a good father. And I literally just have prayers that I say sometimes when I feel like I don't understand this. I don't feel this. I say, Lord, teach me what it means to be your daughter, you know, or show me how to be your daughter. 

What does that look like? Like, show me, like, help me to experience your intimacy and to recognize it. Because many of us don't even, even if we are presented, let's say we don't get a lot of, you know, physical affection, and then someone goes to hug us. Some of us can't even like receive it because we're so used to it being neglected from us, and so sometimes we can't even. We need our eyes to be open, the eyes of our hearts to recognize when God is loving us as an intimate heavenly Father. I appreciated how you talked about that trauma a for absence, b for bad. I think probably there would be a lot of listeners who could understand that, and that would make sense. You talk about God teaching you and showing you how to be His daughter. What is maybe what are one or two things that God has shown you of what that means to be His daughter? And then I would ask, and it might be in the context of a Bible story, but I would also say where would be an example in the Bible. So depending on the best way to answer that, yeah. And I, I, there's a part of me that's like, oh, I wish I had like 10 that I could just rattle off right now. I still am very genuinely in the journey of what does this look like, and you know, as women, I think we want to feel things so much. Like I want to know what it feels like to feel bad, and then there's this rush of good feeling that comes over me, and that just must be the joy of the Lord. And I don't know that I've had as much of that experience. I think I've experienced like the indirect gifts of the Father. I had a tough situation, like a kind of a blindsided, probably like 48 hours ago, blindsided by something that was a huge shock, kind of to our whole family. And I tend to feel the stress right here in the core of me. My chest felt tight, and I even had to take deep breaths as I was going to sleep. And I literally was like, "Okay, Lord, intimate, intimate father setting. What button do I have to push? This would come in handy right now, and you know it just took like a long time for that to go away. Even I even once I fell asleep, like kind of woke up with that tight feeling. But I don't know.

Three months ago, someone had invited me to this women's luncheon with I didn't even know half the women there, and you know the the gal who led it just had some really beautiful questions that she asked that were we got to be honest and vulnerable with one another. But then we kind of wrapped it up with like what's what joy or even after all that the fear of this and all these difficult questions where we were vulnerable. She was like, "What? Let's end with what is your joy in this moment, and most of us around that table said being around a table of women like this-that I think God uses relationships, right? Like, so a father would want you to have good relationships with your siblings and good relationships with your friends, and so I think, boy, if anything has made me feel loved and cared for over the years, its relationships with other Jesus-loving women. That's probably been consistently what's grown me, what's carried me, what's comforted me.

 Is the relationships that the Lord's given me, and then seeing Him love women in Scripture has also been an encouragement to me, and that's you know what I talked about with Leah. We named our firstborn Leah because I was so moved by her story in Scripture. But there's Ruth, and there's Esther, and there's the woman caught in adultery, the woman with the issue of blood, like all these ways where, in fact, Jesus. Called the woman with the issue of blood, he called her daughter. You know that's such a powerful reference to her as someone who was at the end of her rope, physically isolated from community. She had this big moment of faith, touch the hem of his garment, and he turns around and calls her daughter. You know that's if if Jesus can do that, if the the Lord can do that with these women in Scripture that were much more maligned in their culture than you and I are today, He can do it for

us. I love that. That's a that is a great story when we think about that. I love how you said two of the things. One, you talked about women who love Jesus surrounding yourself and being in a like-hearted, like-minded community, and that you gave the the credit of that to God. That as a loving father, He would want that. And you think of you know, as a parent, I know I want my children to have good relationships and good friendships. People who will be there for them, who can do the things that I maybe can't do as a parent because it's a different relationship. Although God can do, you know, all of it, I would imagine, right? Yeah. But but I think that that is a sign and a something that that a good father would want and would provide, so I I love that, and I don't think we can underestimate that power of community. And then the second thing, when you talked about seeing him love women in Scripture, so you named your daughter Leah. Is Leah your favorite example in the Bible, or do you have a favorite, or or I bet even at different seasons you might have a a favorite. Who who might be a favorite, and what might that sport story speak to you?

Well, first response that I had to your first observation is that is the first time I have said that out loud. I'm such a verbal processor. That is the first time I've said, oh, these relationships around me, a loving father would want me to have those, just like a loving father would want us to have relationships with sibling and friends. So that's just so funny that this is the first time I've ever like even thought made that connection, you know. So, so I guess there's God showing us in His own way even now. Oh man, trying to pick out your favorite, you know, stories of women in Scripture is is like trying to you know choose your favorite child or something, but I will say, which my kids are

always trying to get me to do. No, right, right. It's like

nope. I love you all exactly the same. No, but I think well, that really the Leah one was kind of back to that season. Actually, so I went to Biola University, and when I went back and worked there, I took a women of the Bible class, biblical womanhood, and we had to, after studying all these women, choose one for our final project, you know, presentation and everything. And I think it was because, you know, Leah was so neglected by her husband, she was very obviously not the favorite wife. You know, her beautiful younger sister Rachel was, and she was quite unseen. And you even see the progression of how she names her children. Like, surely my husband will love her now. And you know, she just kind of you can see her spiritual progression throughout it, and and then she yet she was the one buried with her husband at the end of her life, and then we also find out it was through Leah, not through Rachel, that the the bloodline of Jesus was, and so it what it spoke to me was probably earlier, and in a way that I didn't realize I was going to experience more more deeply, but even when our earthly desires for love and relationship don't get met, God meets our eternal desires. Like He still, she was in the you know the bloodline of Christ, written into the eternal story that God is telling, and we all are, whether we're loved well or not. And so I think that's what it spoke to me is the the focus on the eternal part of her story, and not just the the small short life that she lived on Earth.

Gosh, I love that. I don't know that I really have thought about it in that way. So thank you for sharing.

Whenever I hear people like, oh, you know, Jesus or God doesn't love women and they're second-rate citizens, it's like, give me, give me a minute. Like I would love that would be like a dream, like speaking engagement, is to prove to people who are, who are doubtful that God doesn't love women in Scripture. It's it's written from beginning to end. It's really beautiful,

and something for all of us to keep in mind, especially when there are days, and especially if we struggled with not having a good father. Yeah, example here. Yeah. So you are in the process of kind of beginning to write a book called Daughters Redeemed. Tell us a little bit about what. Certainly, it sounds like all of this is led to this passion. But tell us a little bit about about that book, and even about the title of the book.

Well, yes, I just I love that the word redeemed. I think about it in that kind of the great biblical narrative of creation, the the fall, redemption, and then restoration and sometimes people use like redeemed and restored sort of interchangeably. But I think about it in that great biblical narrative that we've been redeemed by Christ, right? Like His death and resurrection means we are redeemed. But I don't know that we're we're yet restored. We'll be restored in heaven, and when all things are made new, and there's no more tears, and and all of that. So I really chose that that language specifically that we're still kind of living in the already, but not yet, as some folks refer to it as, and and then the subtitle is found, loved, and nurtured by our good father. And so, I think with what I talked about with naming our firstborn daughter Leah, and then I did a Bible study at church on Esther, and I just started looking into those themes and recognizing that I don't know how many women really look into their identity as daughter. So many of us are wives or mothers, or you know, if we don't have children, we still are workers or we're sisters. Or but daughters tends to be, especially if we had a negative father experience, or even a mother wound, which is a real thing as well, daughterhood doesn't feel like something a lot of people want to dive into identity-wise, or it gets eclipsed so quickly. You know, I was a daughter for three years, and then my parents had my my brother, and now I'm a sister, right? And so you kind of dive into some of these other identities more. 

Oh, I'm

a grown up now. Yeah, yeah. I don't think about being a daughter still because I have a wife and a mother.

Right. In fact, there's actually Daughterhood.org is an organization that focuses on adult daughters as caregivers for their elder aging parents, and that's like the major. It's like, oh, that's so interesting that daughterhood is defined by what you're doing for someone else, versus what what does it mean to be a daughter of the King of Heaven, and we can't earn our salvation through doing. It's not about what we're providing for Him. It's and so just really sitting in what is a daughter, and many of us have difficult daughter experiences. So, how can we redeem that? How can we look through Scripture and see these these women, many of which were neglected, did not have good father figures. Certainly, their culture didn't respect them, in even in the ways that we experience more respect in this culture. 

So, how has he found and loved and nurtured us biblically, but even then in in our own stories? And so, I think that's the direction I was trying to go, but really doing it for my own growth as well. You know, like this is not something like I've arrived. Let me tell you all what this means. It's really like it's taken a long time to to write it because it's I'm growing as I'm writing it. I'm learning as I'm growing. But I'm I've always been I have a gift, a biblical gift of teaching. So whenever I read something or I think about something, I always think, ooh, who can I share this with? And I threatened to write a book for like 20 years now, and my husband's always said I should write a book, and I I do love to write, and so this kind of felt like, all right, this is one that I can put my heart and soul into, which means it's going to take forever, because when I put my all into something, it's like you know I I will just get kind of all in, and but then I have four kids and a job, and you know, so it takes her forever. So this might just be my sort of devotional, years long focus in in hopes that someday, even through podcasts like this or speaking engagements, to give bits and pieces of it, I can you know share what I'm learning with, I'm sure women who can relate and want to experience healing as a daughter. I love that.

Even as you were talking about thinking of ourselves as a daughter, I still, even though my mom is deceased, but my my dad is still here. He'll be 86 this summer, and I think about that, but I don't really think about being a daughter of the king as much as I think about being a servant of the king or a messenger of the king. I don't think about the unique position of being a daughter, both whether it's again even heavenly or earth. So I that's given me pause as you were saying that I think because there is a unique position we think about when if we are parents and when our children were daughters and like you said that intimacy the the closeness and the the hugging and the special moments and the laughing together but then you almost feel like okay, we're we're done with that. Or rather, yeah, we've grown out of

it exactly. And yeah, well, and it even it it's like that highlight between Martha and Mary, and how so many of us can relate to Martha. We do things, we work, we strive, we get we get her done. That's part of being a woman is just working and earning and striving and doing all the things for all the people, and and then you know Martha was like, "Can you get Mary to help me? And he's like, "She's doing the the one thing. She's at my feet, which is it was a very intimate position in that culture for a woman to be at the feet of a rabbi, you know. And then you kind of the the alabaster jar, and you know, with her hair, like just so much intimacy in that relationship, that it was almost uncomfortable for people. That's just not what you did in this culture, and so I don't think we as women know how to. I'll be the first to say, sit at the feet of Jesus. I got stuff to do. Second to say,

right, right. I've got stuff to do, Lord. You know, stop me if you've got a word, but I gotta. I always

say, "Come

on, come on, catch up and tell me what you want. I'm in the car. I'm on my way, right? So yeah. So I'm challenging myself. I don't know how to rest very well. I don't know how to sit at his feet, but I long for it. I know that I long for it. At the at the end of the day, or when I'm in distress, I know that the other things aren't going going to meet meet me in the same way that our heavenly Father

can. 

Oh, 100% that's powerful. So, in a minute, I'm going to ask you a little bit about what you're doing now. But before I get to that, let's say there are some ladies who are listening now, or anyone, frankly, but listening and they're thinking that sounds like something I didn't know that I was longing for. What would be one or two steps that you think that would be great for them to take to begin to explore this idea of intimacy of a good father. Ultimately, they can read your book, but since that's not quite ready yet, what would be one or two steps?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I would say I think I mentioned that I'm in counseling right now, and that's been really fruitful for me. I would definitely recommend a Christian counselor, and sometimes you have to try on a few before it seems like a good fit. I know a lot of counseling can be done, you know, via Zoom like this. So I would recommend Joshua Tree Counseling here in Tucson, as well as the Answer Biblical Counseling Center. I partner with them to teach some of my courses there, and I just know those people, and they want to walk you into intimacy with the Father through His Word, and so that would be the first thing: is that you've got this longing. But women really need to learn things in relationship, right, and in connection with one another. And so that would be the first thing that you know that you. I think if you start prioritizing working through, like knowing there's a longing there, and and working with someone that can help you put words to it, or you know work through some of the healing and that kind of thing, I think would be really valuable. I also know, and I haven't even seen it because I think it just came out a couple months ago. But there is a movie called He Calls Me Daughter. There's sort of a movement where this is happening, people are thinking about this, and there was even some Bible studies on YouTube where it's women sharing their testimonies. And I think part of what helps us heal is knowing that we're not alone. The enemy loves to keep us isolated. Like you're the only one, you're the only one that feels this way. You're the only one that has this shame or this guilt or whatever. And so even just hearing other women's testimonies, I think would be helpful. And then get in community with other like-hearted women who want to grow, want to heal, want to pray with one another, want to do a Bible study together, maybe on one of you know the women in Scripture, just to learn from their lives, but I do really think it needs to be relational. There's only so much you can do, kind of on your own. Certainly, prayer like prayer life, asking God to show us this for sure that that you know this relationship, but also the the horizontal relationships as well, I think, can be really, really valuable.

And when you look at even this epidemic of loneliness, there's a lot of studies out there now, and you think of part of that. We've lost that intimacy with with God. We've lost that even in our culture. We don't have a lot of that intimacy in. And I think even if if women are like I don't know what that looks like, but I want to invite some friends over to talk about what that feels like, and that will begin to to head them in that direction, as you said, or or finding a Bible study, or going to a women's event, or checking out some of the podcasts and information on reclaimed story and other places that that help women who are wanting to live more fully into their life. So, well, thank you for sharing those great next steps. And before we wrap up, I want to just give you just a moment. You and I have known each other for several years. You've had several different roles in ministry, as have I, but currently you are in a newer role, and I would love for you just to be able to share that because I I can attest to one having even used your services in my ministry role, but having been where I was a daughter taking care of my mom and needing those services. So tell us just you know briefly about what you're doing and how people can reach out to you.

Sure, thank you, Robin. Yes, it was definitely something God dropped in my lap through a Christian female friend that I went to Biola with. Actually, so we've known each other for decades. She's up in Phoenix as a chaplain with a hospice company up there, and she connected me to our CEO who started up in Phoenix, but we do the whole state of Arizona. I'm down here in Tucson, and we do senior placement where we help families. We walk with them, offer free services and resources to help folks get into independent living if they're just tired of taking care of and maintaining their home, or assisted living if physically it's no longer safe for them to stay at home, or memory care if there's a dementia or Alzheimer's diagnosis, my grandmother had Alzheimer's, and we had to move her three different times before we found the right care place for her. And so I just vividly remember that as a kid, and it was really difficult to watch. I saw the strain on my parents. It is such an overwhelming process to walk through that as a family, as your loved one declines, and you know it's it's courageous to admit you need more help. I I I thought I was going in to help the seniors, and yet I had like this mama bear heart for the caregivers who are literally like you know stressing themselves out to the point of having health conditions, so that oftentimes it's important to move someone into a safer care community, so that the caregiver doesn't run themselves into the ground. And so it's been like such a surprising joy. I've been doing it for over a year now, and God's just involved, like connected me to the most beautiful families. I consider it an honor to walk through an overwhelming process and use my expertise to help make it more clear. And and I've actually led a couple people to Christ through the process, which has been like something I didn't expect, but I would love more. And I think people are in a more vulnerable place. They're more willing to consider as they think of end of life things what's beyond end of life, right? Where where is God in this? Where is the Creator of the universe in this? And so they're more maybe willing or open to talk about the Lord. Or sometimes I'll offer to pray with them, and most have been quite receptive about it. So it's definitely used my ministry heart in a completely different way, but I have always loved walking with people through transition and using. I used to say sharing resources was one of my love languages. So now I have all these resources to share with people who are going into an overwhelming life season, and if I can make it less overwhelming and make you feel more cared for and empathized with, and then find a safe, engaging place for your loved one. 

Then I'm all in. And so, yeah, we're as far as where to find me. You could probably link my email below or or my phone number. But I work with Evercare Senior Placement here in Tucson. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram, you can find me there at Melanie Snookian. But yeah, it's happy to help, and it's been a surprising joy to to do this new this new job ministry ministry. I've heard business ministry. I don't know what to call it, but it's something. Yeah.

Well, you know, as I was thinking about it, as you were talking, I thought about how you know God never wastes an experience. God weaves it all together. And thinking about how you were caring for those daughters who are caring for their parents, for those daughters who maybe are even caring for parents that they didn't feel very cared for when they were in the reverse role, thinking about preparing for heaven, like I can see how it really all weaves together. Yes, how God's using you

and God, like He's kind of already made me an encourager, but I really try to let them know you have loved your parents so well. You have loved because because I think there's a sense of shame. Like I should be able to carry this load. All myself, all on my own, and it's somehow a failure if I have to bring them into community. Which you know, a lot of them are very isolated, struggling with depression, and community actually revives them in some ways. And they have this last kind of final chapter that they never saw coming, and they take on new hobbies, and you know, it's it's kind of cool to see. But oftentimes, people think of it as failure, and I'm just like, no, you have cared so much that it's it's starting to hurt you. I I sometimes will ask, you know what? So what is it that caused you to call me at this moment in time? You've been caring for them for a long time, and one one gal honestly said, you know, I started noticing that I was drinking a bottle of wine a day, and I figured that might not be the best coping. There's something I'm trying to cope for to get through survival in life, and yeah, that's not the kind of daughter you want to be. And the beauty of it is, once you allow true caregivers to be the caregivers, you get to go back to being daughter and enjoying them as daughter. You can go in and play bingo and go in and have lunch with them, and you get to go back to being daughter and not the one that's sustaining their life, which is a lot of pressure. Right,

daughter and caregiver and sometimes parent and all of this, not only to the senior but also to the the kids that maybe you already have that you are still. 

Oh

yeah, the sandwich generation. Those of us who are raising kids and and dealing with aging parents. It's so much. So I try to hope to be able to give options that relieve that pressure.

Well, thank you so much for sharing not only your past journey and where all of that is taking you to your current journey. I I know that there are just 1000s of our listeners, I'm sure, who can relate to needing to understand the intimacy of a good father, needing to figure out how to be a good daughter, to sit at the feet of both our heavenly Father and maybe be a good daughter to parents that are still with

Us.

So thank you so much for sharing, and it has just been an honor and a blessing to spend this time with you today.

Well, thank you for inviting me, Robin, and asking great questions. Sometimes I don't know how it's all going to go, and then God gave you the right questions to ask and the way to wrap it up. And I was like, "Oh, okay, I didn't see where this was going, but it was it was what it needed to be. And my hope is it really it really blesses those who are listening.

Oh, thank you. God knows, and God has brought that, and I and I know that people will be blessed. So thank you again.

My pleasure.

Thanks for listening. I pray you found hope in today's conversation, and maybe even feel a little less alone in your story. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram at Reclaimed Story. Want to learn more about living a reclaimed life and how you can be a part of our growing community of reclaimers? Check out our website at www.reclaimstory.com. And if you enjoy these inspirational podcasts, be sure to subscribe, rate, and review. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.