Live Well. Live Ready.

Have unexpected things ever happened in your life that left you feeling totally unprepared? Well, that's happened to me too, and I want to talk to you today about how you and I can live well and live ready. Hi, my name is Chrystal Hurst, and if you're joining me for the first time, I'm glad you're here. Be sure you are subscribed to my YouTube channel and that you are following me on Facebook because I'm sharing this video in both places., and that way whenever I go live or upload a video, you'll be sure to get a notification. I'm here every week, week in and week out. My goal is to share content with you that will help you to live your life well. I believe in keeping it real, keeping it holy, but also telling it like it is. And today what I want to tell you to do is how to back that thing up. Now, that's really not what I'm going to say. I mean, I'm not going to say it like that, but maybe I will. Maybe I won't. I'm not sure yet. I can't decide. The point is you do need to back that thing up. Not really, not that thing. I want to talk about some specific things. I want to talk to you about how you can live ready and live well and be prepared because life does what life does, and that is catch you off guard. It will throw the unexpected at you because there is no way that you can possibly plan for everything that will happen in your life. How do I know this to be true? Because I have lived life long enough to know this. But also I've lived life long enough to know that in other areas of our life, if we're not prepared, we pay the piper when the time comes for us to be ready when we're not. Listen, I have a love for all things tech. And in 2007, I bought a brand new computer. I bought a MacBook because someone said MacBooks are more dependable and MacBooks will not fail. I took that MacBook with me on vacation. My husband and I had borrowed an RV from someone. They'd let us use their RV to take a family vacation. And I thought, MacBooks don't fail. I just— somebody told me that, I believed it. And so within the first 6 months of having that MacBook, we went on this family trip. On the dashboard of the RV, we spent so much time bumping along back roads. I set my computer there. And just let it sit there open while we were bumping along on the roads. Well, you know, within a month of getting home, that hard drive failed. It was not designed to take that kind of terrain, but I didn't know that. Someone told me it would be all right. They said that if I had this kind of computer, these will hold up. But I didn't know that computers do what they do, and that is eventually they fail. The hard drives, y'all, they fail. The backup drives, they fail. And if you've ever had a computer or a phone or a system or an iPad iPad or a hard drive fail, you know the feeling of, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, because they always fail at the wrong time. They always stop working when you need them most, and they probably give you a problem when you haven't been backing that thing up like you were supposed to. And then you think, as soon as that computer fails or as soon as that hard drive stops working, I knew I should have bought a new one, or I knew I should have checked it, or it's been 3 months since I backed up my computer to that hard drive. Why did I wait so long to back it up? So today, many, many years later, I have still another MacBook. I drank the apple juice and I've been buying MacBooks ever since. But I did learn that even though you may buy something that has a better quality rating, maybe, or maybe has a better track record and should do better over the long haul, things— listen to me— things in this world, things on this earth were not designed to last. That includes computers, that includes your clothes, and that includes you, the core of you. You are a physical thing in this world. There is nothing in this world, absolutely nothing, that will last forever. Computers tell us this all the time. And because we know, we know the angst of a computer that goes bad, we have heard you need to back that up. Now, I recently had an issue with my new computer. I'm using this computer right now to stream it for you, or else I'd show it to you. But I had an issue with my computer, and when I called to get some assistance, which is why, another reason why I love Apple. I'm not hating on the, you know, the Dell people and the HP people. I got a, I got an HP in my house for the kids to use. But anyway, um, but when I called Mac, and they have great, uh, they have great customer support, he had a couple of solutions for me. He said, well, we can install this, or we can reinstall that, or we can reboot, or we can redo. And then he said, but before we do any of that, do you have a backup? Now y'all, I know better than this because in 2007 My computer died. And not only did it die, it was super painful because in 2007 we took a road trip to go see my grandparents. And when my computer died, all of the photos from my grandparents, my children with their great-grandparents, all of those photos could not be recovered. I, I went to a data recovery specialist in town. He said, 90% of the time I can get it. And if I can't, I will ship it off to California where there's a lab and 99% of the time they can get it. Now he said, it won't be cheap. But at least you'll have your pictures back. And I looked at my husband and I said, I mean, I'm so sorry, but those are my grandparents with my children. So we're gonna have to do whatever it takes to get those. I may have to work to pay it off, but we're gonna have to get that. Y'all, he couldn't get it. He sent it to the lab. They couldn't get it. I was that 1% where you couldn't get the hard drive. I actually still have that hard drive to this day because I'm like, maybe one day the technology will change and they'll be able to lift the photos off of that. I don't know. I'm holding out hope, but I lost those photos because I did not back up my computer because I thought my computer was a stallion. I thought it was a, a wonderful piece of equipment and it was, but it still is a thing that wasn't designed to last. So I learned the hard way, no matter how new you are, no matter how young you are, you still need to have a backup plan. So what do I want to talk to you about today? I want to talk to you about what it looks like for you to have a backup plan. Because even with this computer today that I'm having some tweaky issues with, when I called the help desk— and the help desk was great, they gave me all these solutions, all these things to try— and then he said, do you have a backup? So you know what I had to go do? I've had this computer for a year and a half. I know better. I know better. So y'all, because I needed to back up, I did not have a local backup, and I wanted my computer, if we had to take everything off of it, to be able to come back to life as easy as possible with what without, uh, without much strain and stress, I had to go get a hard drive. Now y'all, I went and bought this little hard drive. Now this is a little hard drive. It is a 4TB solid state drive. Tiny. Why? Because I didn't have room in my suitcase. Y'all can obviously see I'm traveling. I did not have room in my suitcase to bring some honky donkey huge 5, 4TB drive. So I went and got a solid state drive. These are not cheap. They are not cheap, but I needed it and I needed it quick in order to fix a problem. Do you know what happens when you're not prepared? When life does what life does, you will have to fix it and it won't be cheap. So that's the first lesson. You don't wanna wait until you have a problem to try to get prepared at the last minute, because when you wait, the solutions normally are not cheap. Now I'm grateful my computer is now backed up. I have a local copy. I have one in the cloud. So whatever we need to do to fix it, I can do that. But it had me thinking back to that time in 2007. And in 2007, actually in episode 41 of my podcast, I actually taught about my experience with backing up my computer. I'd actually gotten hacked. My website had gotten hacked and I had a backup for my website. My computer died. I did not have a backup for my computer. Why didn't my website being hacked, uh, earlier teach me to back up my computer? I'll tell you why, because we don't like to think about what can go wrong. We don't wanna think about what happens when life goes awry. What happens when we need an emergency fund or an emergency plan? We don't wanna think about the bad things that can happen. We just wanna go along hunky-dory doing our life the way we wanna live and not thinking about how we need to prepare. Preparing takes discipline. Preparing takes work. And it often takes thinking about the worst thing that can happen.. But I wanna tell you that if you are not prepared, if you don't have a backup strategy in your life, if you don't live well while living ready, life will do what life does. It will come in, it will catch you off guard, and you will wish you had prepared. Think about Noah, right? We've all heard the story of Noah building the ark. He's building the ark. God says, get ready for rain. These people, including, including Noah, had never seen rain. Nobody knew what rain was. They wouldn't know it if they'd seen it. But Noah was like, "God told me to get prepared." So he spent time, energy, and money, years of his life, getting ready for something he had never even seen. And what did the people do? They were like, "That's never gonna happen. We don't even know what you're talking about." So the whole time he's getting prepared and he's warning them and he's saying, "I'm trying to get y'all to get ready. I've never seen it either. I don't know when it's gonna come, but what I do know is that when it comes, I have been told to be prepared. The people laughed. The rain came. Noah was in the boat. They were not. Getting prepared for things that will come in life at some point never necessarily, um, it never makes sense or feels good when you're doing it when you don't need it. But when you need it and you did it, that's where the blessing comes. It does take time to get prepared. You have to set aside and be disciplined about setting aside time to get prepared. And what I want to do in today's episode of the podcast and of Coffee with Chrystal on YouTube, because this lives in both places. What I want to do is talk to you about some practical ways that you can back yo' thang up, back yo' stuff up, not just your computer but your life. But here's what I want to tell you: I know it will take time, but the time will be worth the effort. And when you tell me, I know I need to do X, Y, and Z, I'm telling you this up front, regardless of what you think about what I'm about to say, If you tell me you don't have time, if you don't have time to do it right, you don't have time to do it over. And if you don't do it right up front, you'll be doing over what you should have done in the front end of things. And it'll be more painful and it'll be more costly and you will be more stressed trying to get it done quickly. I was sitting with my great aunt, um, a few years ago, couple years ago. Before the pandemic, I went to go visit her. And my grandmother's sister, she's the only one of her generation left. And she said, "Hey Chrystal. Hey Chrissy. Why don't you come over here and read this?" And she pulled out this piece of paper and she put it on the table and she pointed at it. And she was so proud. She said, "I want you to read this. This is my obituary." I said, "Ah, Louise!" How morbid is that? She said, girl, I'm almost 90 years old. I'm not gonna be here always. And I want to say what I want to say about myself. Now y'all can embellish it if you want to, but I know these people, they gonna leave something out. So I want— I'm the best person to tell my story. So why am I waiting on someone else to write it for me? And I said, does that not make you sad to write your obituary thinking about the day you won't be here? She said, it's a fact of life. That one day I won't be here. So since that is a fact of life, why would I not prepare? Now I know most of us don't wanna do that. We don't wanna write our own obituary, but I can tell you that I know of some really keen business leaders who have said they write their obituary and they read it once a week to keep in front of them, to keep front and centered what's really important, what they want people to say about them after they're gone. And what they have to do this week to make sure that the life that they're living, that the decisions that they're making line up with the legacy they want to leave. My Aunt Louise did that. You might wanna consider doing that. What do you want people to say about you after you're gone? Whatever the end result is of your life, listen, you need to back that thing up starting right now and backwards engineer your decisions and your everyday life into who you're saying you want to be, into the legacy that you're saying you want to live. Because if you don't, backwards engineer that into that truth, life will just keep going. Your stuff, your life, your mind, your body will just wear down. And then one day when you need a backup, it won't be there, or you'll be scrambling to try to get it done. We have all been to a funeral where a person was not prepared, and no one was prepared for them to leave either. And there's this mad dash scramble to get the pictures and to get the obituary written and to get, to find the names on the list and to what was the password for their phone. And, you know, there's a reality to the computer that it won't live forever. There's a reality to your life that you won't either. Benjamin Disraeli said, "I'm prepared for the worst, but hope for the best." I want you to hope for the best. I want my body to stay healthy as long as I live. I wanna live until I'm 90 in good health. But I need to back that thing up and make food decisions and exercise decisions today that will equal that reality later. So I want you to be prepared, but I don't want you to be looking for doomsday or the shoe to drop every day. I just want you to be realistic about what you need to do today to live forward. So let me talk to you about some specific things, because Mark Twain said, "A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time." So I want you to be prepared, but I want you to live full too. It's not just about thinking about the worst that could happen in your life, in your finances, in your mind, in your heart. It is about being prepared, being wise, being ready. So here's the bad news. Your system, your body, the things in your life, the people in your life, the house that you live in, the computer that you own, it's not designed to live forever. Your systems, your systems will eventually malfunction. You might get hacked because somebody else in your life jacked stuff up. That man cheated on you, that was a hack, right? Your kid got on drugs, that was a hack. Your boss fired you, that was a hack, right? It wasn't something you did, something external that came in. But no matter which— what we're talking about, whether it's just the, the life journey or a hack, okay, things happen. Your house burns down, that's a hack, okay? You just— it comes out of nowhere. But no matter if it's just the, the way life goes or a hack, it doesn't matter. Something will go wrong with your life someday. Your systems are not designed to last. They will malfunction, and you need to be prepared. That's the bad news. The good news is— here we go— The good news is you have everything you need. You have everything you need. Let me say that again. You have everything you need to prepare. You want to know why? Because your God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, number one. Number two, the Bible says in Peter that you have everything you need for life and godliness, okay? That Jesus says, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and then all these things will be added. So whatever you don't have— information, skills, ability, hardware, software, health tips, whatever— you can get. And then, y'all, you got Google. So let's just start there. You have everything you need to prepare. You may have to ask some questions, you may have to read, you may have to discover, but you have everything you need. Here's the good news: when you prepare, you increase your power. There is a settled feeling that happens when you know that you have 6 months of an emergency fund in the bank. 'Cause you know, if something happens, you all right. It makes you more confident to know that if something goes wrong in your life, I'm ready. I'm ready. There is an unsettledness in your life if you know that you are a parent of young children and you don't have a will. 'Cause you know good and well, if you don't have a will, even if you're single with no kids, if you got stuff, if you don't have a will, than the people you know, you know, you're not covered. Like, you know this. And living with that kind of, I hope the shoe doesn't drop before I get my act together. That's not a, that's not a solid place to stand. So when you are prepared, whether that means your computer is backed up, whether that means your finances are backed up, whether that means your mind is backed up, and I'm going to talk to you about some specific ways to do that. You can live in a more powerful place because you're not worried. You don't have a low-key angst that I hope the shoe doesn't drop before I get ready. And then the third reason that you have good news here is that you can have a correct perspective about your path. Being prepared gives you clarity because you're not knee-jerk trying to figure things out just to fix the thing that broke. You can have clarity. Clarity would have meant, had I not waited until the last minute to buy this daggone hard drive, clarity would have meant that I would have gone to Costco first and shopped the sales first. And bought something a lot less expensive and better researched. But when you need something at the last minute, then you don't have good perspective. You just need to get the thing done, and you may not get it done the most responsible, the most cost-efficient, or the most sensible way. Anything done at the last minute to fix a problem is not the optimal way. I can tell you that now. So when you are prepared, you don't have to sweat the small stuff because the small stuff is not going to tip your life over. When you are prepared, you can have hope that no matter what happens on earth, it's okay because there is a heaven. When you're prepared, you know that even if you have to leave this earth before your time, or you don't get to live on this earth the way you planned, you know that you can still leave a legacy. Having a plan, being prepared, uh, It gives you power and it gives you a strong perspective on your path. So let me talk to you about a few ways that I want you— I want you to be convicted. I want you to be— I want you to write it down. I want you to make it a priority about some things you need to do in order to be prepared to back your life up. Okay, number 1, let's talk about money. Save for a rainy day. You need— start with 1 month, then aim for 3 months. Then aim for 6 months of an emergency fund. Okay, now there are people out there who do this. Dave Ramsey does this. His and Her Money, a couple, uh, who, who are committed to helping people get their finances straight, they do this. There are debt calculators everywhere. The thing that I need you to do is while you live your life, figure out what you're going to do to prepare for the thing that will go wrong in your life so that you have money in the bank. You may need to pick up a second job. You may need to stop doing something for a period of time. Get rid of the cable, change your phone bill. I don't know what you're gonna have to do. But what I do want to tell you is save for a rainy day. And when my parents— I never forget this— my parents told me when they didn't have money and they met with a financial planner, they did not have money, and he said, can you save $5 a week? They said yes. He said, start saving, and then as you make more, save more. What's more important is that you have the habit of being prepared, and then as God increases your livelihood, then you increase what you're saving. You'll be all right. Just start it now. I need you to start it now. If you have not started it, or if you had it and you lost it, start it again as soon as you can. Start it again, because there's nothing worse than having financial catastrophe and you knew you should have been saving. And y'all, we are the most consumerist generationist ever. No, I just made up words in a series of words that do not go right, but you know what I meant. We buy things we don't need. We, we spend money on pleasures that don't even last. We don't remember what we did last week for fun, but we spent money on it. We put food into our bodies. We spend more money than we need to. And there are places, if you will look in the pockets of your life, there are places where you can save. It's a habit. It's a mindset. And you need to start doing that. Keep your records updated. Y'all, at some point in the Inner Circle, I'm going to have one of my girlfriends come and talk about the little black book. Her mother would tell her when her mother was sick, she would say, well, you know, she would just mention, she kept saying, now you know, That's in my death book. If you need it, it's in my death book. She literally called a black binder, 3-ring binder, where she had put all of her information in it. She called it her death book. And it was just a black binder. She said, everything you need. Now, I had never heard of this. Apparently it's a thing. Now, I don't know where I got the idea from, but I didn't call it a death book. I called it my home— I called it my home management binder for important papers.. And in there is our marriage certificate and the Social Security cards and birth certificates and the will and the power of attorney and all these different things. Um, I, I think about this is what I think about. I am such the administrator for our home. Okay. Passwords, uh, the, the, the, the, the details for where our banking information is. Like, if I got hit by a bus, would they be able to— would I, would I leave my family in dire straits? Because they don't know how to pick up where I left off. I don't wanna do that. I don't want my family to be reeling from my departure and then also have to figure out how to do all the things that I was doing. So my friend says, she calls it a death book. Her mother called it a death book. She calls it the black binder. Mine, I called it home management important papers. But my question is, if you got hit by a bus today, would the people that loved you while they're grieving your absence also have to piece together your life? Have you made it easy for them to know what your passwords are, to know where the important papers are? Do they know where the life insurance is? Okay, like all of that. So that's a much deeper conversation, but you can start gradually gathering these things together and make sure your spouse, your mom, your sister, your best friend, that one or two people probably two, know where that is. My mother had to bury her brother. Of the 8 siblings, he was the first to pass. And when she went to his home, he was single. He's a musician, totally an artsy person. He was not prepared. He got sick out of the blue. It was not something that he saw coming. And so his home wasn't ready. And she came back home and she said from that day forward, she started cleaning out her house. She was decluttering and organizing and getting rid of things. And she said, I just would never want to put y'all through that where you're crying over me and trying to find my papers. I don't want y'all to have any doubt about where the important things are. And then she just started little by little telling me about where things were and where the keys to this were and what was locked away and how to get into this and what the code was for this. And she would say, did you write that down? Did you write that down? And she would write it down too, but she was giving it to me. And even though we knew she was sick, we didn't talk a lot about where things were because I knew before she ever got sick. I knew. What would your family be reeling from? If you're single, who can know your stuff? My aunt is, uh, she's 76. She lives in London. She comes here usually 3 months of the year. She lives in London and she has two people in London that says, when I'm pass away, this is what you need to know. Here's— and she told our family here, this is the person who knows my affairs. My grandmother had a little red purse. It was a red purse that was in the closet, and I used to see that red purse there all the time. And then when she was sick, my aunt said, um, My aunt said, "Yeah, she told me everything I need is in the little red purse." And I said, "The little red purse in the closet?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Is that why that's there?" She said, "Yep. All of her important papers are in that little red purse." She had her insurance for her jewelry and her life— and her life insurance. And she just put it in this little red purse in a closet. But when her time came, there were no questions. And of course, these are things that you think about as you get older.. But I want to tell you, at any stage of your life, someone will have to pull the pieces of your life together, and you want to make it as easy for them as possible because your loved ones are who's going to be doing that. Okay, so we've talked about saving money. We've talked about keeping your records updated, not, not your passwords from 3 years ago, but the last time, you know, maybe every 3 months you print, print it out and you, and you put it somewhere under lock and key in your house. But now I want to talk to you about living ready. We keep so much stuff, y'all. We buy too much stuff. We basically, our homes have become these grand storage units. And as I mentioned to you before, my mother made it a priority to start to declutter. I'll never forget when I was a teenager, I heard a minister talk about traveling light. He said, often the plane you thought you were going to get on, the destination you thought you were going to go to, is not the destination that God is actually calling you to. But if you have checked 3 bags and then have to get those 3 bags off of the first plane, and run to catch the second plane, it's gonna be hard for you to stay nimble and move quick. Travel light. Learn how to just take a carry-on so that if something changes, you can move. I want to tell you that there are things that God is going to ask you to do in your life that you're not going to be able to do easily because you're not prepared to move. You're not prepared to be nimble. You're not prepared to be flexible because you have too much stuff. If you don't need it, share it. Get rid of it. Throw it away. Travel lightly. Corrie ten Boom told Chuck Swindoll, as she watched him managing his children one Sunday after church, she just walked up to him and she said, "Can I share something with you, Pastor Swindoll?" And he said, "Yes." She said, "I know you love your children, but hold them loosely." so that when God needs to remove them from your care, he doesn't have to pry them from your hands. There are things in your life, whether they be your children, your marriage, your things, your stuff, your jewelry, your, your, your furniture— there will come a time in your life when those things will no longer be able to be in your care. My 90-year-old aunt, y'all, moved from Baltimore to Dallas. And she's been calling me to give me things left and right because she moved. In this season of her life, she doesn't need these things anymore. And I'm grateful to receive. She gave me a chest for the end of my bed, y'all. And then she said, "Do you want it?" I said, "Yes, it's beautiful." She said, "I'm so glad." And then she said, "It was my mother-in-law's." It's over 100 years old. I'm so grateful to have that. And guess what? She has no need for it. Better for her to give it to me when she can know that I'm enjoying it than for her to hold on to it and for it to be something later that has to be moved, decluttered, dealt with. I want you to live ready by being nimble, not just nimble in not having a bunch of physical things to care for. I want you to be nimble because you have not built a life in only one vein. Let me tell you what I mean. If the pandemic taught us nothing else, we need to be nimble with what we can do to make a living. Cultivate your passions. Live ready that if at a moment's notice you have to change your career, that you've been cultivating other things. Keep going to school so you can be nimble. Keep learning and reading so you can be nimble. Keep working on the things that God has put in your heart so you can be nimble. Often we have to wait for catastrophe to realize, that what we needed to do in our life or what we've been wanting to do in our life is actually the thing that we can do that will allow us to have the life or have the income that we need to have. So keep working on it while you wait on new instructions, because allowing yourself to have multiple ways to develop your income or have— live your life, it is a way for you to stay nimble and to be prepared. I want you to learn how to live off the grid a little bit, just a little bit. Listen, when the world shut down last year, I went to Costco. I bought a 25-pound bag of beans. You want to know why? Why? Because I know how to grind beans, yes beans, into flour if I have to. I know how to make bread from bean flour. I know how to make bread from wheat, like the wheat that comes off the stalk. Now, I'm not telling you, you have to be crunchy like me, but what I am saying is you should know how to do more than pick up food for dinner. You need to know how to do some basic things in your life so that when you have to function, if life ever changes suddenly, you didn't wait until you needed to know to learn. Whatever you wished you had learned the last time when the world shut down and when you couldn't get into the grocery store. And when, when you went into the grocery store, there was no toilet paper that season. What did you think then that you could have done then to be prepared? Write that down and start learning it now. Learn how to make food on very little. Learn how to function. I mean, do you have, I mean, like literally if the electricity went out, when the electricity went out in Texas, did you know how to function? For those of y'all who are Texans, Now, people who live in Florida— I have a friend who lives in Florida, and whenever there's a hurricane, they know how to do it because they have to do it all the time. I wouldn't know how to live through a hurricane, but based on where she lives, she knows what to do. She knows how to get ready. She knows how to be prepared. And because they know it's coming likely at least once every other year, she always lives prepared. What do you need to do to live prepared in the physical for what could happen, whether that's a loss of electricity, a loss of availability of the store. Like, what do you need? You don't just stress out about it, just be prepared. Live ready. Don't wait until you need it to decide you need to learn it. Last thing about living ready is hide God's word in your heart. You don't want to wait until life sucks to wish you knew God better. You don't want to wait until you get sick to then just start praying then. You don't want to wait until you need to know what God wants you to do to try to seek God's wisdom by reading his word. Why are you waiting? Life is gonna happen, so when it happens, already know what it says. Make it a practice and a discipline of hiding God's word in your heart. All right, so save money, keep your records together, live ready, live for legacy. What do you want people to say about you when you're not here? You don't have to necessarily write your obituary, but I would maybe make a bullet point of the things that matter. Are you a person who has time for people? Are you a person who's always ready with a positive word? Just quick little things. And then say, how does my now life measure up against my looking back on my life? And whatever legacy you want to leave, start backing that thing up and backwards engineering what you want your life to be later. And if you are led, write your obituary. That is ultimately what backing your life up is. It is deciding literally, I need to be ready for things to go wrong financially. I need to be ready for things to go wrong physically and be ready to, to have my records updated if I'm no longer here. I need to be ready to have God speak into my life and ask him to have him ask me to do something different, and on a dime I can move, I can shift because I'm not tied down. I need to be ready when life storms come, literal or figural, because if life storms come to my soul, I need to know God's word. If life storm comes in my home, I need to be prepared. I need to be stocked up with some beans or some wheat or something that's not perishable and know how to fix it. Even if I don't have electricity, you need to live for legacy so that you're not at— in your 70s then thinking about what you wanted people to say about you. Think about it now in your 20s and your 30s and your 40s and your 50s, and then start backwards engineering your life. And lastly, y'all, love well, because at the end of this— the end of your life, how you've loved people and served people is all that's going to matter. Spend time with the people you love. Tell them that you love them often, and then often show them your love in action. What you put into your life is what you will get out of your life. So how are you investing? If I show up once a year to back up my computer, it will not go bad the day after I back it up. It'll go— it'll go bad the 11th month and the 20th day. And what I did set me up for disaster. But if I back it up every week, back it up every month even, if I have it on rotating backup in the cloud, then when it goes bad, I will have been prepared. Life is good. It can be really good. It can be really gracious. It can be fun. It can be exciting. We can love our lives, but life is what life does. And that means that sometimes it's not gonna go the way you want it to. So when it doesn't, I want you to be prepared. And I want you not to wait until you have to find a backup solution to stressfully have to create one. I want you to live wise and to live well. I want you to live ready. I want you to be prepared. And I want you to back that thing up along the way. Okay. So this is me telling you to get ready, to be a wise woman, to be well prepared. And all the resources that are available to you on the internet and books with friends in your church, in your community, whatever you don't know, learn it, use it, and be the person that when the rain comes, you'd been building the whole boat the whole time. And while you're at it, if you don't have a hard drive for your computer, go get one. Go get one. Don't wait until it crashes to be mad that you knew you should have backed it up. And I can guarantee you this, there's somebody that's gonna say 3 weeks from now, "I watched that live with Chrystal Hurst. She told me to back up my computer. I can't believe." You wanna know how I know that? It's because I watched a video where someone said, "Back up your computer." So I went and bought the hard drive. That was in 2007. And when my computer in 2007 crashed, Guess where the hard drive was? Sitting on the table right behind my screen. I had the information. I had the tool. I had just never used it. Listen, don't be that girl. Don't be that guy. Whatever is resonating in your heart right now to do, to be ready, get ready. Live well. Be prepared. Back it up. This is me telling you that when life does what it does, you actually can be a wise woman and prepare. And I hope I've given you some practical ways today to do just that. All right, y'all, so this is me telling you, back it up, and I'll see you next week. Hey!