Fierce Grace: Jessie Torres

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, Jessi Torres of Fierce Grace. Jessi, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Chris. Happy to be here.

Well, you've intrigued me already in the green room, so I'm going to dive in. I love the name Fierce Grace. How did you come up with that?

Oh my goodness. Um, so it's interesting what it actually represents to me. The way I came about it was actually through the picture of a horse.

Okay, tell me more.

I saw this picture for the first time in a little shop in Wyoming.

Okay.

And it's a beautiful sensual picture of a horse that is black and white, and it's looking down, and its mane is covering its face, and you see the bust of the horse, and it's looking sideways, and the wind is blowing its face, and it's just beautiful. And I loved it, but I was visiting, so I wasn't going to buy this huge picture and bring it on the plane.

Was this a photograph or a painting?

It was a photograph.

Okay.

But it was framed in a beautiful, like, picket fence frame out in Wyoming, so it was beautiful. So anyway, I fell in love with it and then just realized I wasn't going to buy it. And then I want to say maybe So 2 or 3 years later, I was in California on Rodeo Drive with a friend of mine. We went into this gallery and there was that picture again. And I was like, whoa, like this picture, what is it about this picture? I love it. I really want to have this. And so I eventually did buy it and framed it myself and read the story of the photographer that took the picture and he called it Fierce Grace. And what I loved about it was that it was a perfect description of a very powerful animal, right? A very strong— when you think of a stallion running on the beach, it's like this power, but there's this beauty and this grace to their stride, you know? And I thought, wow, what a beautiful example of the masculine-feminine, of our dark and our light, right? The beauty that comes with not knowing light without knowing dark, right? And so to me, fierce grace represents that duality between all of us. We all carry masculine and feminine, and if it's not one or the other, it's the balance of both. And how do we come together and show up and take a stand for our beliefs and take a stand for, you know, what we, what we want to protect? And how do we do it with such grace and such love that allows us to serve from the heart versus control or dictatorship or whatever. It's just like, how do we find that within ourselves so that we can give it to the world? So that's what fierce grace means for me.

I love that. I mean, we've already determined you're bougie because you're in Jackson Hole. You didn't say Jackson, but I'm telling you, you were in Jackson. I was. And then Rodeo Drive. So you like to go nice places, which is totally great. I have no problem with that. My daughter, my middle daughter, my younger daughter is a figurative oil painter. So I totally understand bougie. My wife would say I'm bougie. Anyway, how did you come to start Fierce Grace? In other words, what's the origin story behind Fierce Grace?

Such a great question. The origin story is my own story. So I came from a history of sexual abuse with my father for my first 18 years, from my first memory until I left. And then I walked right into a marriage for the next 18 years, um, that left me apathetic and willing myself to die because suicide wasn't an option. I had 3 kids and I didn't want to leave them with that, but I was praying somebody would blow the red light and just be done because if this is life, I, I don't want to be here. This is too hard. Um, and I do want to preface that my story is not to vilify anybody. I, I love my ex, I love my father, I, you know, I've forgiven everything and I trust the divine order in all of it. But coming from that state of complete apathy to a desire to serve humanity at the level that I feel convicted to, I believe that so can others. If I can get through that, from that place to this place, that so can others. And so, um, that moment of not wanting to live was shifted. I call it a short circuit in my brain, um, from an act of kindness from a group of people that will never know who they woke up. I honestly wish I could look them up and thank them, but it was their act of kindness that short-circuited my brain and made me think. I didn't even know to call it kindness at the time. I just thought, I don't know what this feeling is that I have every time I'm around these people, but if this feeling is available, then life is worth living. And it gave me the courage to get out of my situation, my marriage, which was verbally, emotionally, mentally brutal and had brought me to that state of apathy. And from that developed an insatiable hunger to understand human beings. At that point, I was 38 years old. This is over 25 years ago now, um, and I thought, I don't even know who I am. I was literally like a newborn out in the woods. I had to buy a Thomas Guide just to show myself how to get out, drive out of my city, because that's how kept I was. And so I was literally terrified of everything. And so I wanted to understand, how did I get here? How did— why did my dad do what he did? Why did my mom allow it? Why did my husband do what he did? And why did I allow it?, right? And I wanted to understand, so I went on this obsession, if you will, of personal development or understanding human beings. And I didn't— I never read a book. If I read the first paragraph, I'd fall asleep. I was not a reader. But at this stage, I was picking up books, I was going to workshops, I was going to therapy, I was going to, you know, seminars, whatever I could do to help find understanding of how I got here. And from that, I, you know, went to my therapist and said, I kind of want to do what you do because I really want to help people. But that's a lot of school and that's a lot of time. And back then, this is back in like 2006, she's like, you should be a coach. And I said, soccer coach? Like, what are you talking about? Like, I had no idea, right, what this meant. And so I looked into it. I got connected with CTI, which is Coaches Training Institute, ICF, International Coaching Federation School. And I went through that training. And after going through that training, I realized when you do that, you are your first client, right? Because all the questions you're answering and how you're learning, you're bringing yourself to the table. And I absolutely fell in love with it. Then I fell into Tony Robbins, which was a whole story in and of itself, and I thought, well, gosh, and I was working full-time in corporate trying to be a coach, right? So I was trying to build my coaching practice while I was in corporate, and I fell into Tony Robbins. I'm like, oh my God, if I could be a coach here, that would be amazing, right? Because this energy and then the feeling here is incredible. And so I worked my way into being a Tony Robbins coach for 7 years, and that was incredible because you get to coach people from all over the world and you start to notice patterns in human behavior. It doesn't matter where you're from. So it gave me a good muscle, but I knew there was more. There was more of a spiritual connection I wanted. So I went to India and became a meditation instructor. I, I am a trainer for the Institute of HeartMath, which studies rhythm of the heart and our vibrational energy that's emitted when we're under stress or sadness or whatever. And so I did all of this, Chris, but here's the thing. You asked the question, how did Fierce Grace come about? Out of all the training and the certifications, domestic violence counselor, all these things, nothing taught me like my journey. Nothing taught me by actually living in the pits of shame, living in the pits of self-hatred, right? Like literally willing myself to die, right? Because who's gonna love me? I'm gross, I'm filthy, I'm damaged goods. This was the story, I told myself. And so understanding, coming out of that and having a zest for life, wanting to suck the juice out of it every day, it's like, okay, I had to take a look at what got me here. Because now I see people and I'm like, how do you not see how beautiful you are? Right? Like, I can see through those lenses. But I had to stop and say, well, Jessie, you didn't think so back then. You lived in this belief that you were just a menace. Just no good. So what did you do? And I had to go back and trace my journey and look at all the times I got knocked down and what did I do to get back up and start to pull that magic from my past. Because I always tell people, if you don't look for the gift, then you only remember the pain.

Well, there's a lot to unpack there. So what was the act of kindness that this group did for you that, that was the circuit breaker?

I love this question because it seems so simple, and I want people to know how simple it is to change the trajectory of someone's life. I, um, for the first time, I wanted to do something for myself. I was still married, and, um, I'd been a stay-at-home mom, and I just, I wanted more purpose. I knew there was something more for me. So my husband was, um, LAPD. He had retired, medically retired, and became an agent for Amtrak. And so anyway, I lived behind the yellow tape. I went on 6 or 7 ride-alongs, and I thought it was incredible what they did. But I thought, I'm not going to be a cop. I'm not going to be throwing anybody up against any wall. So I thought, what if I can be a firefighter? Because at least that's helping people, right? And my daughter's like, Mom, you see a hurt kid, you're gonna start crying. And I said, but if I believe I own the power to help them, I think I can manage. So I decided to take a course in emergency medicine in the local community college, and, um, it was a very difficult class. It was an 8-hour Saturday course because I had to be home with my kids, right? And so I would go every Saturday, and I got to the point my ex-husband broke his tib fib on a motorcycle accident right in the middle of me going to this class, which was, by the way, very hard for me to get okayed to go without him because he wanted to come with everything I did. And, um, and so I was trying to study, and because of how my marriage was, I had to go to the hospital to be with him in the morning before I went to work. I went on my lunch hour, and then I would go home, feed the kids, and go back to the hospital. And I'd stay there till 11 o'clock at night until he went to sleep. Like, this is what I did, right? And so I had a 10-chapter quiz and I failed. I was devastated because this was the first time I'd ever done anything for myself, and I, I was devastated. So the, the teacher came to me and said he knew something was up because this wasn't my typical grade or whatever. And an EMT, you can't fail because you're the 911 call, you know what I mean? So it's— you're done. So, um, I had a conversation with him and I explained what was going on at home, and he said, okay, look, I'll do you a favor. He said, I won't fail you, I'll give you an incomplete if you promise to take the course again next semester. So I was like elated. I'm like, yes, thank you, thank you, thank you. So what he allowed me to do was audit the class. So I would come every Saturday. It's half lecture and then half scenarios. So he would have these 911 mock calls. I became the patient. So now I— he would put me in stairwells, he would put me under bushes, and then they had to answer the 911 call and they would have to, you know, come rescue me. I was terrified. Now I want you to know who I was was this woman that looked down at the ground. I didn't make eye contact with anybody. I was very afraid. He said group study is mandatory because it's a hard class, and I was looking for all the women in the class because there's no way my husband will allow me to study with men. You know, so this is how I was. So now I'm getting strapped to a gurney, and I'm like, oh my God, if my husband saw this, I would be in so much trouble. But they started to pull leaves out of my hair and thank me and say, thank you for— you're helping us learn so much, and we appreciate you. At the end of the class, I started to feel this feeling like I couldn't wait for that Saturday class. I decided to take pictures of their journey. They come in, this is the local community college, so they come in with mohawks, ear piercings, and by the end of the class, they're standing at attention, haircut and look uniform. It was beautiful. I did this montage. This is back 2003 now. Making video montages was not as easy as it is today. I'm literally taking pictures and compiling. I did this whole series of their journey, and they all put money in a bowl and bought me a Best Buy card. Now, it seems like the smallest little thing, but I did not understand. Like, wait, you bought this gift for— like, why? Why did you? They're like, because you've been so great, you've been helping us learn. And I'm— it short-circuited my brain. I had not— my father told me, people just want to subconsciously get in your pants, Jesse, so don't trust anybody. My ex-husband said, "Hey, people want to wreck a good marriage, so don't talk about our marriage to anybody." You know, so I had this belief that people were bad before they were good, that these people gave me this gift, and from my perspective, it was for nothing because I was just happy to be there. But when they acted that way, it short-circuited my mind. You're giving me this gift? Wow. Like it did something to me that, that made me feel— I don't know what this feeling is, but if it's available, then life is worth living. And it gave me the courage to get out of my situation.

A gift freely given. Yes. I mean, I think I'm probably one of the world's worst skeptics, and I've been that way all my life. I don't I don't know exactly why. I think it's more character than experience. But I don't know that. But the gift freely given doesn't make sense. It does not line up with the way our brains work. You know, the marketing experiments where they'll put— I remember one, it was like free dollar bills, and it was a bucket of dollar bills in Times Square or something like that. And it's like, yeah, take one. And we're like, people were like, nobody took one. Because it's like, why? There's got to be something behind it. What's the motivation here? Right? So I don't— I guess at some level, we're all skeptics. But the gift freely given without any strings is powerful, I would say. And you mentioned the spiritual, and I don't know your beliefs, but I can speak to my beliefs. That, to me, a gift freely given is an expression of love. And I think that love is the most powerful force in the universe. I think it, it is a reflection of God's nature. I think God is love. And we, we resonate with that when someone shows us love, like, at a level that is foundational. Like, I mean, it just, it just resonates with us. And, you know, you talk about— my mother was a victim of incest. She was adopted. And sexually abused by her father. And when you're a child, you're innocent, you don't have any culpability in the situation. But it's very easy to transfer that when you go into adulthood to the, the actions and choices you make, right? And I think that the power of love to transform it— I'm curious your opinion on this, and your thoughts on it, because there's nothing else that can heal the way love does. Um, what are your thoughts?

I think you're 100% right. I tell people, if you feel depressed or if you feel weighted, go love somebody. Just go love somebody. Go, go read to an elderly person that doesn't have family. Go hold a veteran's hand that, you know, and listen to their stories. Like, when you open up to love, it's the law of reciprocity. Like, you're gonna get it back just by virtue of being loving. Giving, you get love back. By making someone smile, by complimenting someone, which is why I love that you asked the question, because the people that were kind to me will never know who they woke up. Like, they literally changed the trajectory of my life with a simple act. So when we open up in love, when we give love, love begets love. And even just complimenting the Starbucks lady, we don't know the chaos she might be going through. She may be in an abusive relationship, and she may just have heard her child has cancer. We don't freaking know, but we get to act, we get to behave. And maybe just saying, you know what, you have a great smile, and seeing her smile and saying thank you, and that brings us joy the minute we see that we made somebody smile. Like, that, that's enough. And so in a world where things seem chaotic and out of control and we get into politics or whether you love Trump, you hate Trump, whatever the frick, when you look at it and you feel despair and you feel like it's hopeless, it isn't. You, each one of you, has the power to change the trajectory of someone's life by going out and being kind, showing love, expressing love. Like you said, like, if I'm feeling weighted, then I'm gonna go volunteer somewhere, or I'm gonna go help my neighbor, or I'm gonna— because the minute you open your heart up to give that, you get it back, you know. And for the longest time I've been told my love is overwhelming. I've been— I'm like, and it was at a time that I was very vulnerable and I didn't know what to do with it. I'm like, what do I do then with myself if who I am being is overwhelming somebody? I didn't want to make anybody feel bad, so momentarily it crushed me. Or I get the pat on the head and they're like, Jesse, love is great, but love doesn't pay the bills. Right? And I'm like, huh. Now I look at it and I'm like, okay, so if you don't love your clients, you won't have any. If you don't love your employees, they won't be connected to your mission. And if you don't love your family, they will leave you. So tell me this whole flipping thing is not about love.

Yes, and I think I think where people get hung up, where it gets hard to love others or act in a loving way, is because we don't love ourselves. And I find it fascinating, Jesus's commandment of 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' And most people are not very good at loving themselves. So how could they? I mean, the reality is, if you're only reflecting what's in your own heart, and you don't love yourself, then you can't really love someone else, right? I mean, you can fake it.

You don't own, right?

You can fake it. And there are a lot of people that, that fake it, even, you know, non-psychopaths who are very good at imitating behavior, right? But the, I guess, the measure, I would say, of love— I had a guest on recently, and he described it as the economy of the intangible. And he used the example of parents, you know, and, you know, you, you love each other before you have children. And then you have a child, and then you reach— it's like unlocking another level of love, right? And you have another child. Well, you don't love the first child less than you did the second child. Like, there is no addition, there is no subtraction in the economy of the intangible. It's all addition. Right? And love is limitless. But, but in some ways, it's limited to ourselves. Like, how, how do we— like, I, I— you can't love your children. Who is, is, you know, as a parent and a mother— I mean, like, as a father, I don't have that connection that a mother does, that has someone growing inside of you. Right. Um, but as a parent, your love for your children initially is like the most you're going to love anybody. But it's still limited to you. Like, how much do you love yourself? And that's what happens is this, this transference to children of your own shit, right? Like, so, like, well, because I feel this way about myself, I can't give it to you. So I'm passing it on, this, this self-hatred that I have. And, uh, you, you can try as a parent. I tried But you still pass that on. You pass those wounds on to your children, because you haven't healed yourself.

100%. 100%. And I was just talking actually to a client who's a mother of 3 boys. And the question isn't, how can I be the best parent? The question is, how can you be the best adult you want your children to become?

Mm-hmm.

Right? Because they don't always do what we tell them. They do what we show them. Right? And like you, to your point, we can't give what we don't own. Mm-hmm. Right? And so for this client, I was honoring her for taking the steps to make sure she's fulfilled and what a great service that is to her voice, right? To be able to come to her own wellbeing, to her own fulfillment, because they'll, will, she will demonstrate that to her children.. And I think you nailed it in regards to this human journey as I see it, is coming back to absolute sovereignty and self-acceptance. I went through a period of time where I became a bit obsessed with NDEs. So these are near-death experiences, right? And I looked for many of them and I listened to everybody's story and it was uncanny how similar they all were and what they felt. In fact, Zach— Dr. Zach Bush talks about this, and it's so fascinating. He's— so he's the doctor they call in to revive the person who's going into cardiac arrest on the operating table, right? So time and time again, he would bring people back from actually dying or flatlining. And he realized over and over and over again, they would come back and they'd go, why'd you do that? And he was like, what the heck? Like, I just brought you back. Like, this is great news. But they'd be like, why'd you do that? Why? Because because what they felt on the other side was 100% acceptance. They didn't have to be anything, they weren't labeled, they were literally just purity and beauty, right? They were total acceptance. And this one particular story of this father who fell asleep at the wheel after a family vacation. He had a 6-year-old and a 6-month-old and he married his high school sweetheart. And he's looking at his baby in the back and he fell asleep at the wheel. His wife and baby got ejected and killed. He died and he experienced seeing his wife in this total acceptance and he's like, oh my God, and she looked at him and said, what are you doing here? And he's like, what do you mean? This is so beautiful. She's like, no, you need to go back. And he's like, why? Why would I? You know, and then you can hear in the distance the 6-year-old screaming out, for him. And she's like, that's why. And he's like, what about you? And she's like, I'm not going back. And then he comes back, he had severed his leg, um, and now he's in massive pain. So he comes back and he's just like, now I'm the, the man that killed his wife and 6-month-old. I'm the father that has to raise a 6-year-old by myself. I'm— that all of a sudden we inhabit this physical form and we come back to all these responsibilities, and now he beats himself up, and now he goes into his mind about all the things he did wrong. And so it was challenging until he kept going back to that feeling of acceptance, and he started to fall in love with himself. But it took some time, because in that moment of just touching that, seeing— it's almost like seeing yourself through the lenses of God, right? And then coming back into the physical form, there's all these judgments, there's all these, you know, we literally crucify ourselves in our behavior and our actions, and we pull away from that love. And what if this was in divine order? And to close the loop, after some time of healing, he met somebody and he started to have feelings for her and wanted to marry her. And he had tons of guilt. He visited his wife's grave and he's sharing with her, I met someone and I'm uncertain. And he literally had this vision of her come there and she said to him, of course you did. I sent her. And it was this whole cathartic moment where he was able to release then his, his wife and marry, and then he was able to raise a 6-year-old with this beautiful woman. So again, it's like if we start to look at life through those lenses of like, how do we come back to ourselves? How do we come back to the innocence of a child, the divine perfection we were when we took our first breath, right? There's no wrong, there's only divinity in that moment where that child is born. There's no wrong, right? There's no judgment. There's no, oh wow, he's crying a lot. He, you know, nobody does that, right? And so we, we look at that beauty and then as we grow, we experience life and we start to develop meaning around what happens to us. And then we wrap that meaning into an identity, right? And now all of a sudden we move away from that divinity and we have this self-judgment. Using myself as an example, like you said earlier, I grew up, now I'm smart. So I go back and look at my inner child and I condemn myself. You should have done more to fight off your father. You should have kicked, you should have screamed, you should have poked his eye. You should have done more. And I judged myself so harshly for not doing more because now I'm a grownup and I know better. I was little. I had no idea. I loved my dad, right? But that's what the mind does. So I had to break all that to come back to falling in love and being witness to her bravery. Being witness to her creativity, her resilience, because that's also true. So I think our journey is literally looking at our pain, looking at what we've been through, and seeing the champion in the arena, seeing the one that got back up, because that's also true. And we don't know light without dark. So what if the depth of our darkness was converse to the height of our light, if we seek it?

I feel like we're, we're not going deep enough into the spiritual context. And I've, I've heard near-death experience stories like you, you're, you shared. I also have a close friend that had the exact opposite. Near-death experience where he— it was, it was darker than he'd ever imagined. It was dark, and, and all he could feel were these— something, something was there, multiple somethings were there, and they didn't want him to leave. They were keeping him And he woke up. It was an operating table, heart-stopped moment. And he came back. And he was terrified. And that started him on a quest for God. And I think there's— and to me, it's very hard to parse this idea of a loving God that also has judgment and wrath. I'm going to make a wild-ass assumption and assume you grew up Catholic. Am I right? Yeah. Okay. That was an educated guess on my part. And I think that's a common struggle of people that either have a faith in God or are seeking God is reconciling that. The idea of love and judgment, love and wrath. How do you— is that something that you've addressed or come to an understanding with? Or is that something that you just don't believe?

And when you ask that, I don't believe in The wrath and the love in the wrath of God, the judgment of God. When my brother was killed 30 years ago, I was raised Catholic. You're right. At the time of his death, I was Christian. Now I consider myself more spiritual than religious. More connected to God than I ever have been. But when my brother was killed, I questioned everything and I lost faith. I thought, I don't know if you exist, God. What if there's nothing? What if my brother's going to get buried 6 feet under with worms crawling out of his eye hole? This is how I thought. And then, if you do exist, God, I hate you for taking my brother. That's how I felt until my brother showed himself to me. And it was in a moment of cathartic grief. And he said, and he pointed to what looked like other beings, it was all white. And he just said, everything is as it's supposed to be, Jess. And in that moment, I didn't know what it meant. But it brought me peace. And I knew that he was okay. So how do we define the wrath of God? Is that part like this was an innocent man who was taken by someone who had his own pain or whatever. Hurt people hurt people, right? How is that okay, right? I couldn't reconcile. My brother was being a good Samaritan. The guy said his car was broken down, so he gave him a ride, took him 3 blocks and shot him. Like, how could I reconcile that? But in that moment I'm like, if I trust in God, if I trust in the divine order of it all, I don't get to always understand. I don't get to always say, you know, okay, you know, I don't get to like it, but I do get to trust it. I get to trust it because if I don't, I sign up to suffer. If I say, God, that shouldn't have happened because he was a good man, he was doing a good thing, there was no— he was innocent in the whole thing, that shouldn't have happened, God. If I say that, I am arguing with reality. And when I argue with reality, I lose 100% of the time. So if the reality is my brother is not here and this is how he was taken, then I must seek God's plan in it. What are the consequences of my brother's death? There was over 300 people at his funeral that we didn't know whose lives he had touched. The ripple effect of his death wasn't just exclusive to me, it was to many, right? And I don't know God's design. I don't know the impact that this had on many. I know what it had on mine, and it caused me to, to be on a quest to understand if this is under divine order, if this is part of this human experience plan, God, then what's here for me? And this question became even bigger 2 years ago when my little brother was murdered. Now, when my older brother was murdered, he was 15. Idolized my brother. Since then, he was looking for a big brother. He ended up getting involved with gangs. He ended up being in and out of prison throughout his journey. At this stage, he was 43 and was doing the best he ever had. He was taking his daughters to school, he was helping them with homework, he opened up a business called Resilience LLC. He was doing it and he got shot in the back. So now, God, here I am again. I already checked the box. I already lost a brother to murder. This can't happen twice. Why is this happening to me, right? And that wasn't the question I asked. It was one of those like, no, right? But my question then became, God, if the The divine plan here is for both my brothers to be taken. What do you want with me? And the message I heard was, Jesse, you need to eat your own medicine. If you believe that there's always light in the darkest moments, you need to find that right now. And it wasn't the answer I wanted. No, but I was able to find it in the moment of my deepest sorrow. My deepest pain, my deepest grief, I connected to the depth of my grief is equivalent to the depth of my love.

Yeah, and this applies whether you ascribe a spiritual purpose, you believe in God, or if you just look at it from a strictly secular standpoint. I read a book recently, I highly recommend it. It's called What Happy People Know by Dr. Keith Baker. And he had lost a son. Either he— I don't remember the specifics, but like, he died shortly after birth. I don't remember the cause. But it was that grief that gave rise to his— he calls it optimism, maybe resilience. But what he realized in that moment was that he could remember his son and the love that he had for his son. And that replaced the grief. And I think that's exactly what you're saying, is that you can't— the only reason you have grief is because you've loved. Right? And there is not one without the other. And I think you're 100% right in that we don't understand, you know, we're sitting here right after the tragedy in Texas with the flooding of the Guadalupe River, and you have all of these innocent young campers that drowned. And you're trying to ascribe understanding to that, that, how does that make sense? And I personally, you know, the way I handle that is like, I don't, I don't believe that was God's will. I don't believe it's God's will that young people get, you know, young children get cancer and die. I don't believe it was God's will that the things that happened to you happened. What I do believe is that without— I don't have the capacity to understand, which is what you said. And that I know God loves me. And so it doesn't— it— and I know God loved those kids that drowned. And like, that's all I need to understand. I can understand that. And I have to trust that. You know, one of the— one of the questions— I think the question that I'm going to ask God is, I know that you knew when you created man, all of the horrible things that we were going to do, and that we were going to do to each other. Whatever God has created for us, has to be worth it. Or he wouldn't have done it. Because he loves. And that, when you really sit with that, really kind of blows your mind. Because it's like, yeah, I can't imagine that. I can't imagine that. Yet the words from the Scripture are very clear. No, no, no eye has seen and no mind conceived what God has for those that love him. So, you know, like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't have the capacity to know. But I trust.

Very much. And that trust, I think, is the key component of our human experience, to trust when it doesn't make sense, to trust when we don't want it to look that way. Right, to trust and have faith that there is a divine order we know nothing about. Yeah, right. And one of the examples that I use is, um, are you familiar with John Walsh, the gentleman that created America's Most Wanted?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

He did that and he saved thousands of people, and he did it on the heels of the loss of a 6-year-old boy.

Yes.

So what if Adam, his son, his contract with God was that I'm going to come into life for 6 short years, and the loss of me is the impact that John needs because he's going to save the many.

Yeah, and that's— yes, could be. I, I think, I think back There's a story. It's an ancient Hebrew story codified in the Midrash, which is the oral law, which was written about the same time as the Gospels were written, or the letters to Paul. So somewhere around the early 1st century. It was written down, the oral law was written. And there's a story about Moses when he is in Egypt, and the Pharaoh says, you know, I'm going to cut your straw in half, and you have to produce twice as much. And Moses asks God, why? Why Why is this? We're— we are literally taking infants and using them as bricks because we don't have enough straw. How can this be right? And God told Moses, he said, those people that you're using as bricks were going to turn out bad. And he said, but to prove that I'm just, I will let you pick one of those children to live. And Moses did. And that child grew up to be the one that at Mount Sinai convinced the people to build the golden calf. All of that to illustrate the story is that like, We just don't know. Like, I mean, and we can't know. And I think trying to attribute understanding to those things puts us in a dangerous place, because it puts us in the place of God to say, you know, to ascribe meaning to things that are evil. Like, I mean, like, I don't know. I don't know what the purpose is. It could be, to your point, that Adam— that was Adam's purpose. It's hard for me to get around the idea that God would let someone die at a violent method.

But see, we're saying God would let. So it's kind of like, think about it. All Adam did was return home.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. Right? From our human experience.

Yes. No, you know, you're 100% right.

It's like, no, bring him back. Like, I want him in my human experience.

Right?

Correct. Adam just came and beautifully said, okay, God, now I'm coming back home. I've done my part here in this human experience. Or a Candy Lightner, who, you know, at the loss of her 13-year-old daughter, uh, getting hit by a drunk driver, created Mothers Against Drunk Driving, right? So again, to your point, understanding— like, do I understand that? No. Do I have faith in the design? I do. And I trust my God. I trust that that was her 13 years of contribution in this human experience, and then she went back home so that Candy can save the many and live her purpose, right? So again, it's like we can write a different story, but if we do, it's just going to cause us pain, right? It's going to cause us to believe that God is mean, right? And God is punishing, and that God is— you know, we can write that story, but we don't really know. And if we're really going to have faith in our Creator, then we have to trust that it's all under divine order. It's not God letting somebody die, it's the contract and agreement. And what if they're angels? I see my father and my ex-husband as angels in my life. That my— maybe in my contract with God, I scripted, okay, God, you know what, my life lesson is going to be forgiveness, right? That's what I'm going to come here to experience. Okay, great, Jesse, but if you're going to experience life as forgiveness, well, you're going to need some things to forgive. So Dad raised his hand, said, I'll be that for you. Husband raised his hand, I'll be that for you. Because you're going to become an expert at forgiveness. So then they come here with me, they, they live by design, these things happened, I create a meaning that I'm ugly, worthless, and dirty. My human experience is to break free from that. They behaved, I wrote the story about my divinity and my beauty, and all of it was for me to come back home to witness myself through God's lenses regardless of what happened to me. And fall back in love with me. Because as I fall back in love with me, I fall back in love with God, and I have faith and I have trust that I am co-creating. And from that, I get to love humanity. Because to your earlier point, I can't give what I don't own. If I don't love me, if I'm judging me, I'm judging the whole because I am part of it. So the greatest way to serve humanity is to fall in love with yourself. And come to that complete acceptance. You don't have to die to get there.

Unfortunately, that is the end of our time, but I think it's a perfect place to end the conversation. Um, Jesse, you have generously donated a resource which we will have in the, uh, links to the show notes. Tell us briefly what that gift is.

It's called the 10 Steps Guide to Freedom, and it is 10 simple steps that you could take right now in this moment to help liberate you, whether it's your emotional state, your mental state, whatever it is that you can take. Because I know some people might be listening and going, you know, but yeah, but Jesse, you don't understand my situation. I'm stuck. I can't do this. I have no money. I have whatever the story is. This is 10 simple things you can do right now to help turn that needle and to start giving yourself little bits of freedom. And ultimately, you'll open up to believe that you actually deserve the life that you dream of.

Perfect. Listeners will have that link in our show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, share the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.