S 2 Episode 9: Jonathan Pitts

Hi y'all, I'm here with my cousin—

brother cousin—

brother cousin Jonathan. Just to confuse people even further about how we're all related. My cousin, my sister cousin Winter Pitts, this is her husband Jonathan. My cousin Winter went home to be with the Lord 6 months ago. Can you believe it's been 6, over a little over 6 months? Months.

Yeah, 6 months and 3 weeks now, I guess.

Yeah, crazy. Um, very suddenly. And, um, I know that here and there some of you may have heard, um, some of the, some of the events and us talking about Winter. He's done lives. Our family did a, right after she, like 24 hours after she passed away, we did a thing with the 4 Evans kids and our dad talking about what do you do when something happens that, you know, how can a good God allow bad things to happen, basically? And how do you reconcile your belief in him when you wonder, you're questioning his hand because you don't see the heart of what's happening? I know that you've had a chance to have a few conversations about the different aspects, but what I really want to focus on today are a couple of things, just because we're family and I kind of have a different vantage point. One of the things, I was sitting here this morning listening to podcasts with her that I've done with her.

With Winter.

With Winter. 2016, I've done a few, but in 2016 I came over to y'all's house. Actually, we were sitting in the, I don't know if y'all call it the study, but the one with the sliding barn door. And I come over one time, we were sitting on the floor recording. We could hear you doing dishes in the kitchen. Katie came and interrupted us.

Sorry. No, no, no, it was fine. It was like, you know, authentic.

But in that conversation, she said, you know, 2 years ago, as we were talking about how she had started writing books, she said, "2 years ago, I was doing nothing." And we had this conversation about what God had started doing in her life and the opportunities that he was giving to her. In that conversation, she also talked about dealing with unexpected life surprises, and she talked about finding out that y'all were having twins. Twins and that whole story about how she just couldn't even speak and how immediately in the car, they have 4 girls, the last 2 were twins, um, in the car while she's speechless and totally like, oh my gosh, this is what, how, I don't, she couldn't even, you immediately were like, thank you Jesus, hallelujah, you're calling everybody, you're so excited. As soon as I heard —her reference, that moment for y'all, it fast-forwarded me to us being in the hospital. We were in a room for families with a door to a room where her body was. You took the girls in, you came out, and immediately you wanted to sing songs of praise to God. So it said to me, before we talk about her, a lot about you, that what might catch people off guard, what might be painful, unexpected, difficult, you can't foresee how it's going to all work out. Because when y'all got pregnant with the twins, I mean, you know, like, you know, money was a thing. It's always a thing, but it was like, okay, we're just trying to make, make things work. And so where she went into, oh my gosh, how are we going to do this? You went into, this is great. And obviously winter's passing wasn't great, but you went into a place of thankfulness, gratitude in the midst of the difficult moment. So my thought is you're built this way, but other people are not built this way and they're wondering if God allows something hard like this, how do you do that? So while it's natural for you, could you explain what happens in you or what you're doing in your head to help you enter hard moments like that?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I would first of all say, you know, people have asked me over the last 6 months, like, how are you doing this? How are you leading your family like this? It's been obviously really public. And for me, I, the one thing I say is it's not me, it's God, because I truly believe it. You know, I would say it's not me, it's God because the constant theme for me is that God's, I feel like God has me. Me this way. Not to not hurt in loss or not to not grieve in loss, but how he's built me is in spontaneous change. For whatever reason, he gives me the grace and he gives me the hope to get through it. So like, for example, with the twins, you know, one, like, I also take my perspective is I think I just keep perspective too, because with the twins when they came, um, one, minutes before when Winter walked into that doctor's office to find out that she was having twins, we thought that she was actually having a still pregnancy. Yeah, they couldn't find a heartbeat.

Eptopic pregnancy, something like that.

Yeah, they couldn't find a heartbeat when she went in, um, a week before that. We were going on vacation and they were like, it looks like ectopic. I think it was ectopic. And they're like, so just go, you know, go on your vacation, then come back the next week. And so she came back in that next week I'm sitting in the car, 2 babies in the back in car seats. And so I'm sitting there thinking and I pray, I say, Lord, if, if you give me a healthy baby, I'll give you all the glory. That's what a simple prayer. And I just, you know, my mind though, it's like, it's, you know, it's kind of over. They're going to tell us some procedure or whatever. And so when she comes out, for whatever reason, like I see her in the, my side mirror, passenger, passenger mirror, and I see her walking towards the car crying. And I don't know how I knew, but I knew we were having twins. I have no idea.

She didn't tell you. She didn't tell me.

So she said, "Jonathan just knew." And she opened the door and she's crying, but she had like— it wasn't— it wasn't like a sorrowful cry, but it wasn't a hopeful cry. I just said— I forget what I first said, but I said like something like, "Oh my gosh, we're having twins." Yes, you knew it. And she just burst into tears. I'm like, "Oh my gosh!" I'm calling people. But I think I'm celebrating what wasn't, which was the death of a baby, and then celebrating the hopeful future that we had with twins, even though we didn't have it all figured out. I mean, we didn't barely have enough money to feed the two we had at the time, and she had just come home from work and half our income was gone. So there was a lot we could look at and be upset about. Our car wasn't big enough, you know, all these different things. But I think as I fast forward, though, And it's interesting that you say that because I fast forward to, you know, from that story, you know, multiple years ahead from your podcast, 2 years ahead. I just think about like instead of the perspective of thinking about everything I lost, like my mind was reeling with what God gave me, like reeling with the fact that I didn't even deserve her in the first place. Reeling with the fact that she could have, should have walked away from me because the immature young dude I was in college. You know, really with the fact that like God had given me a gift that I was unwrapping every day because I didn't, you know, Winter was, she was understated. I think she was simple. There are a lot of words that you could use to describe her, but the more that she lived, the more you realize the gift that she was to me, to our family, to the kingdom at large.

You called her a giant over and over and over again. Giant.

But in a little package. Yeah, giant. Did I say that? Or you said that? You said giant. You can steal it. You can steal it. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, she was a giant, but I didn't— I think every day I lived with her, I realized more and more of the value, the gifting, just the immense calling that God had on her life. So for me, my perspective, I just kept the perspective of, thank you, Lord, for what I had. And you talk about singing, like my desire to just spontaneously sing. I'm in the hospital room with her. This is before my 3 youngest are there with me because they came kind of in a car behind me on the way to the hospital. Lena's not there yet. Y'all aren't there yet. And the doctor comes out, the emergency room doctor comes out and says, hey, you know, we thought we had a pulse, but it's not there. And I'm a Boy Scout. She had gone at least 30 minutes with no oxygen. I just knew that even if she was there, she wasn't going to be there. So in my mind, I was kind of preparing for the worst. They come out and said, we found a pulse, but we don't have it anymore, and just basically asked me, they said, we think that she's gone. Almost like, I think they said, you know, can we have your permission just to let her go, something to that effect, and stop the, whatever, the chest compressions. So I said yeah, and I said, let me just come in and say goodbye to her, they asked if I wanted to, so I did. And the only thing I knew to do in that moment was was to sing. So I'm like caressing her hair, touching her still warm face, and I'm singing, um, All Sons and Daughters has a song, um, it's your breath in my lungs, so I pour out a praise, pour out a praise. It's your breath in my lungs, so I pour out a praise, my praise to you always. Greater are you, Lord, or something like that. So, and I, it was funny, as Winter would have appreciated if I'd messed the lyric up, because I used to mess them up all the time. She'd be shaking her head at me. So I'm singing that in her ear You know, and I don't know whether she was already gone, but I just sensed that God just gave her the ability— Well, regardless, she heard you. Yeah, yeah, to hear me sing.

Here or there, she heard you.

But that was just as much, like, the part of that for me was like singing to her, reminding her of the faithful God that she was going to see, but then also singing to myself to remind myself of the faithful God that I was still serving, even though she wasn't there. And I don't know, like, it's been perspective. Just—

Well, both times you're saying the same thing. I'm thinking about and aware of and cognizant of what I've lost or could have lost and focused on hope. You use that word. Yeah. And whether it's the hope of what you're grateful for, grateful for having had her, but grateful trusting what You have no idea in this moment what's happening next. You're not even thinking about what's happening next, but you have hope in God and that's where you went automatically.

Yeah. It's like, you know, I've said a few times that I just have this keen awareness that I've, you know, I believe something my whole life. I've read about something my whole life and that was the moment where the veil between heaven and earth was just close as it's ever been for me. And I feel like my faith was not only tested, but it was like literally in my face. And, you know, I think about that scripture, we have this hope as an anchor for our soul, firm and secure. Like, it's literally all I had in that moment.

In that moment, in those moments. Yeah. In those moments in our life when you get that close or it gets that hard, what you believe bubbles to the top.

Yeah. Either way. Yeah. And that for me, that was actually comforting because I'm like, and this is just over the course of the next weeks, months, like this reality of like, okay, God is real and he's got me, you know, and he's got my girls. And so I believe that from that moment.

And so, well, there's, there's so many questions as you're talking, but I want to pause for just a second because, um, Everybody still, I still get, I'm sure you do, I get messages in my, you know, DMs in my Instagram. People have emailed me, a lady here. They're still like, okay, they've heard over and over again that Winter died suddenly. It was unexpected, but what happened?

Yeah, so Winter had a heart condition known as mitral valve prolapse, which is very common. I think like 1 in 10 Americans kids have some type of heart murmur. So it's a heart murmur. So she had that heart murmur from the time she was a little girl, and— or when she was born, and the doctors knew about it. And so she had like a kind of a slushy sounding— if you, if you put your head to her chest, you could hear like her heart just sounded a little bit slushier than like the blood pumping. But it was never life-threatening. The doctors always said, you know, you take a baby aspirin a day, you know. That's what she did. She took a baby aspirin a day, and they told her every year her heart wasn't growing, which I guess if— yeah, an enlarged heart is— yeah, it would enlarge as her valve stopped working more, right? Stopped working, started working less, however you say that. Yeah. Um, and she'd gone to the cardiologist, I don't remember how many months before, but no more than 6 or 7 months before, whatever. And they said your heart's fine, and eventually you'll need a heart valve replacement, but, um, you're fine for now. So we— it was never in our minds like a, um, you know, it was never anything that we thought would have taken her life. And you know, we knew it was at some level serious, but it wasn't, you know, the doctors didn't talk about it like it could take her life. And as long as she was kind of doing what they asked her to do, she was fine. And so one day she's, you know, we had actually moved to Nashville. I took a role as a pastor after having worked for the Evans brand of ministry, I call it, for about 15 years, 14 years. We accepted kind of a call to go pastor in Nashville. So we moved to Nashville on July 9th and we were back in Dallas. We had done a week of vacation with my family in Iowa, which was awesome because we saw all my family. We took family pictures that Winter was in, all that. So all of our 9 nieces and nephews and went back to Dallas, stayed at your sister's house, and we were there for a week. Winter was finishing up a book ironically called I Am Yours. Which was a prayer book for girls. And I was finishing up my last week working for your dad. And I came home from work and Winter was playing with my daughters and my two nieces and my sister-in-law. They were playing some word game and I walked in exhausted and went and laid down and took like a 20-minute nap and got up because I knew Winter had to finish. She had to finish that book that week. And so she was just kind of like, hey, she texted me. She was like, hey, I really need you to be with the kids, which was normal, you know, in regular world.

I need a nap.

I didn't have it first. And I need you to be with these kids so I can write for a couple hours. And she knew I'd be okay with that. Cause I was like, I felt the pressure of her getting that book done. Right.

She'd be like, I need you to finish it.

Yeah. So anyway, she went and laid down after me and I fixed dinner for the kids. And I just went into the— I had to have ribs from Costco, which I'll probably never eat again. Just remembering, but we had ribs from Costco and I went to the bathroom to floss my teeth, walked through the master bedroom and came back out. And I won't get too graphic, but she, you know, she had basically, her heart had stopped and her, you know, what's cool is for me now thinking about it is her heart had stopped and her body was responding trying to— trying to live. Live. But I believe she was already, she was already gone. That God was, I talked to my brother-in-law who's a surgeon who basically said the minute that her brain stopped getting oxygen, she would have just been unconscious. She would have felt no pain and she was gone. So for me, there's comfort in that, just knowing that. And, you know, knowing Winter, and you've talked about it a ton, like, Winter loved naps. That was like her favorite hobby. Actually, her favorite hobby was travel, but that was expensive, so naps were much cheaper. But she basically died while she was taking a nap, and that's the way she would have wanted to go. And it was quick and it was really sudden.

And was it her heart condition or something else?

Yeah, they called it, um, cardiac dysrhythmia. Um, which is basically just a fancy word for her heart stopped and we don't know why. I think, you know, so, um, but they connected it to the mitral valve prolapse. So, you know, it's hard to get details about all that stuff, but basically, yeah, just sudden heart failure. So, so she—

I don't— I'm sure— I don't know, in all of our family conversations, sometimes I don't know what we've all talked about, what we've just talked about in little pockets. But, um, that Sunday we were at Priscilla's house because her second son having a birthday having his birthday, and we were watching on TV the story of the woman who lost her family on the duck boat.

It was 9 family members. Yeah.

And literally, and literally, Winter said, oof, you know, I hope when God takes me, he doesn't take me like that. She said, I just want him to take me when I'm asleep. Crazy. There have been a series of ways that God has shown up and said, hey, you know, I know this is a free fall, but I'm I gotcha. How are some of those— what are some of those other things?

Yeah, I mean, there were several. One was the fact that we were actually in Dallas when she passed away. We had already moved to Nashville.

Two days before, y'all weren't—

yeah, we weren't there two days before. She had done an event with you that weekend. We'd already moved to Nashville, so we were back in Dallas. We were in a place that she was very comfortable. We'd already sold our house, but we were at Priscilla's old house and a place that we basically raised our kids, did baths, did cookouts, just a very comfortable place for her. When she passed, we were supposed to go to the city hospital closer to our house that we had our kids at, but we ended up going out to Waxahachie to the brand new Baylor Hospital, which isn't significant for many people. They don't know, but the reality is Winter hated old stuff. This was a— this was the hospital that, you know, people go to like When you go to die, they always joke and say this is the hospital you go to, the other one that the devil's going to. But anyway, we end up at a hospital that's barely maybe 2 years old. And if you don't know this about Winter, like, Winter, every house we've ever been in, she's prayed for a new bathtub because she didn't want to take a bath in anybody else's bathtub. And so being in a new hospital and having her last breaths, you know, even in the emergency room, you're like, God gave her new. That's a big deal. That's a big deal for So that, I text friends of ours who are, one of our friends is one of the surgeons at that hospital. I texted her and said, "Hey, we're on the way to the hospital. Winter's not breathing." We were supposed to do 2 nights with them at a hotel the next 2 nights after that night, 'cause they had a medical conference and had extra rooms. Well, I thought they were in downtown Dallas for that. They end up showing up at the hospital just a few minutes after us and were there to receive us and just— Medical people who were friends. Medical people who were friends. The surgeon at that hospital. Yeah. The general surgeon at the hospital. Her name was Val, Isabel, and Val said to Alina when Alina got there, she's the one that stopped Alina, and she goes, listen, she grabs her by the shoulders, she says, I want you to know you serve a big God, a big, big God. Don't you ever forget it. So Val and Greg, her husband, being there was massive. I think about that morning before, once she had been passed, I had read a devotional. I didn't actually read the devotional, but there's a devotional in my inbox called Do You Have an Exit Strategy? It was an article written by Randy Clark. Randy Frazee, or devotional written by Randy Frazee, who's a pastor, which talked about when you leave this earth, do you have an exit strategy? And he talked about water skiing and how when he first learned to water ski, he didn't know how to get down off of the skis. And his friends are yelling from the back of the boat, just let go of the rope, just let go of the rope. And he was afraid to because he thought he'd break into a million pieces. And so he finally lets go of the rope and he just slowly glides down into the water. And he basically paralleled his entry into the water safely to the entry into heaven that believers have using scripture. And I didn't read it that morning. I took a run at 5 o'clock that morning knowing I had that article. I thought it was about leadership changes and ended up being about death. And so I actually read that with the family. I think you might have been there that night at 1 o'clock in the morning after her passing. I read this devotional to my family that was a comforting piece of the God we serve and how he— you know, there's a scripture I memorized. It's, I think I think it's in Psalms or Proverbs. Have no fear of sudden death and the ruin that overtakes the wicked, for the Lord is at your right side and he'll keep your foot from being snared. And I memorized that verse because I was afraid to fly, and I fly way too much to be afraid to fly. So I memorized that verse, and when Chrystal was like, man, that verse is so morbid, like, why did you memorize that verse? But in her sudden death, like, that wasn't a reminder to me that God was going to save her from death. It all of a sudden became a reminder to me that in death we don't need to fear, you know. Because God will keep your foot from being snared. Like, the ultimate snare of death separated from God didn't happen with her. And the moment that she died, he didn't stop loving her. Her love— his love for her got all the more real, and he kept her from the snare of death. I mean, that was—

I just think it's a gift, like, that you guys— because did y'all see your house in Nashville before you bought it?

Uh, no, we didn't. Yeah, we saw it on Skype.

You saw— yeah, so they didn't see the house, but God still allowed y'all after you bought it to see it. Like she wanted this house. From what I hear, you were a little stressed out cause it was, it's, it's a nice house and you know, something that your family will enjoy. But even though she didn't get to see it to buy it, he allowed her to see it and to point out the girls, their room to the girls. Like you had that one picture of her and the girls in the doorway. So it's not like, y'all got this house and she never went. She actually got to take the girls.

She lived there for, yeah, I think 3 or 4 nights we were there. And yeah, picked out the girls' rooms. And you know, it was funny because she told me, um, a week after we bought it that she was praying for a 6-bedroom house, um, but she didn't tell me because she knew I would self-righteously judge her, which I would have, um, I would have. But now looking, looking at like, for whatever reason, Winter knew we needed house that big because now my oldest sister lives with us and she— there's a third floor and the third floor has a bathroom and a bedroom and like a little—

I'm coming to stay with you a couple weeks.

Well, and the fact that— the fact that we can actually have Carmen, my sister, on the third floor. Yes. All me and my girls on the second floor. Yep. And then we still have a guest space where Chrystal Hurst will stay when she comes. It has room for her and her boys or all that. I mean, we've had family almost every week that we've been in Nashville these last 6 months and somehow Winter just knew knew that was the house we needed.

She just knew that was the house you needed. I mean, there have been so many, so many little gifts along the way, but I have to be honest because I'm not naturally built that way. And Anthony, even to a greater extreme, you know, he and I are the kind of the emotional ones in the family. He just, I just do a better job of holding it together. He's just like, wah! But you know, I mean, I've had Winter, when I would talk to her about her heart, you years ago, like she would tear up talking about it. She was like, I don't want to, I don't want to think about it. Because the thought that something that, you know, even the doctors were saying it's fine, you'll have to have this procedure later. The thought that there was something wrong that presented this possibility, that's one thing. The second thing is in our conversations when we would talk about parenting, she would say to me, with me, my relationship with Charis, she's like, she's, she would dream of think about her relationship with her girls when they were grown. Yeah. The reality that, you know, she was excited about so many things and she was excited about Nashville. And one time I was in the car and I wasn't texting, I don't think, maybe it was directions, but I had my phone in my hand. She was like, I'm gonna need you to put your phone down. I said, what? I'm only doing— She said, listen, you may not want to live, but I want to live. So I'm just sitting here going, so even though you're grateful and even though you're thankful, even though you have hope, have you struggled with anger at all?

No, because ultimately the life that she was hoping for here, she's experiencing more fully there. Like, do we believe it or do we not believe it? Do you believe it or do you not? Because for me, like, if I don't believe what I believe, then yeah, you're mad. Yeah. And we're also—

you feel robbed. Yeah, we're all screwed.

We're all screwed. But if what we believe is true, true, then Winter is experiencing more joy times a million, X a billion. I mean, just exponentially more joy than what she ever thought she could experience here. And you know, one of the things I think about, I'm like, I never thought about myself being like mystical, but now I'm way more mystical than I've ever been. I've been way—

God has been like, I see you, I got you, show up.

Yeah. Well, and then even like being so close, you know, most of us don't want to think about the reality of death. And so it's been there with grandparents or whatever, but like at 30— far away— yeah, 39 years old, death had been really distant for me, even though I've done funerals for even close friends. But there's something about losing your spouse and being there when, when they leave this earth that just has you really close to eternity. And, um, I'm kind of losing my train of thought. There's something specific I want to say.

We were just talking about death and why you're not mad, and if you, you believe—

you either believe it or you don't. Yeah, so I'm like, in, in, in being close to death— yeah, I'm, I'm close to it. I I see it, and I see the— not only do I see the reality, but here's the thing, here's the thing. One of the things I've thought about death is death is the most normal thing that happens in the life of humans. To everybody. To everybody. That is totally unnatural. Like, when Chrystal leaving this earth, how she left this earth, she was—

Our bodies want to live. Cognizant. We want to live.

She wants to live, her body wants to live, she's cognizant, she's laughing minutes before, and then all of a sudden the body— well, the body's still there, What's crazy is the soul is gone. Like, the minute— like, that's how you know the difference between the body and the soul. It's a big deal because her body was still there, her soul was gone. Like, you could tell in a moment. You can tell. And so for me, it's like, it's— it feels unnatural for death to happen, which would actually line up with what the Bible says, because we're not meant to die. Yeah, right. Um, so anyway, it just— I don't even know what we're talking about, but heaven is real. Winter was with the Lord, and I don't struggle with anger. That's what we're talking about, because I actually believe what I say I believe. And I'm not saying you don't. I'm just saying the way I'm built, it forces me to—

but you know what, it forces me to ask the question you just presented. Do you believe it or not?

Well, do you believe it or not? Don't try to get on— make sure your salvation is real.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay, so, um, I want to say this to you. You loved her really well. And I know that, you know, we all talk about marriage and we all have hard spots in marriage, but you, you know, you're an emotional guy. You express your emotions. You don't hold them back. You loved her really well. You express that to everybody. So much so because of her personality, sometimes you'd be like, oh my God, Jonathan. But, um, I want to know if you had to say one thing that Wynter taught you just by living with her for 15 years, what did you learn from Wynter? I know a lot, but like, what one thing?

I would say, I mean, you say it a different way. You say basically that the idea of like knowing how to rest, almost knowing how to Sabbath. But for me it was like, I have this, I'm an Enneagram 3, so I'm an achiever. I go, go, go. I think you're an Enneagram 3, it's the same thing. But like, she just taught me how to just relax and trust God. Like in moments where I think I'm in way more control than I am, in moments where I think I'm able to solve a problem, fix something, bring a solution. Her life and her ministry taught me that God's in control, and when God wants to do something, God can do it, and He needs your participation, your active participation. And one of the beautiful things I think about Windsor is, as much as she liked to rest, and I think a lot of that had to actually do with her heart. Her heart was working harder than our hearts to work. I didn't think about it until after she passed, but she needed a lot of rest, and I think a lot of it had to do with her heart. But anyway, God birthed this incredible ministry. This magazine, 10 books in how many years? 5, a little less than 5 years. All the stuff that she did, and she wasn't like this go-getter kind of person, go-getter at all. And I would be frustrated because I was trying to be more of a go-getter because, you know, we got this contract, she has to get this book, it has to be turned in, and you're late.

I bet y'all writing that marriage book together, Empty, was hilarious.

Oh my goodness, we had frustrating moments, but by that point I'm actually working with her on her— that would have been her 9th book. Yeah. So I'm just kind of— it's par for the course. I'm just like, I know this girl's gonna show up, show up for her life late. But she showed up one time, we got it done. And she, you know, even like her last book, she was actually a month late. She was already a month late. She was supposed to turn in I Am Yours, that Pearl book, I want to say in May— no, in June, June 2nd. So she— but the week before, I knew she wasn't gonna turn it in. She's like, yeah, but yeah, they'll work with me, like they'll push the deadline out. And they did. And even when she died, that book wasn't done. It was 80% done, but the book still got done. It got finished. And Winter was like, she told me— She's in heaven saying, "I told you everything works out." In May, she told me that she felt like she was out of words. So I think she was struggling towards the end of that book, which is significant.

Yeah. You have written, you have done all this writing in a short amount of time, and in a short amount of time prior to the Lord taking you home, you said Yeah, I'm out of words.

Those exact words. And she said, the only thing I have— I feel like I want to do at this point— it wasn't— she wasn't saying she was done writing. She was saying, I'm done, I'm done writing in that— in this tween girl space. My girls have kind of lived in this space. I've done it. She said, the only thing I want to do now at this point is write my story. And what's beautiful to me is that God is writing her story one podcast at a time, one book sale at a time, one interview at a time, one Lena singing at a conference at a time. I mean, God is writing her story in a way that is not possible if she's here. And you know, it's also really beautiful to me is that, you know, Winter left this earth at the peak of her life in ministry. It's like there's just something about that. I mean, maybe I'm just trying to rationalize and just, you know, maybe that's what husbands do when they lose their wives, but there's just reality for me.

I don't think it's rational. I think they're rationalizing. I think Over and over again, we, you know, it's hard to say it, but just to know that while God doesn't cause bad things to happen in our life, he allows them because we live in an evil world and we live in a world that's not perfect. But as it passes through his hands, it's laced with good. It can't go through his hands without being laced with the goodness of who he is. And you see that. You know, with her life. You talk about not worrying. I want to ask you this though. You talk about not worrying. You got the 4 girls, which, you know, I talked to Andrea a little bit about it. Andrea is Wynter's brother's wife. So another sister, cousin, right? And we were talking about Wynter's passing and she was describing to me what she saw from her angle. But I said, my question was, So 3 of the girls were there and I was like, I wonder if what they saw, she said they saw everything. Whether it's the 3 younger girls being there to experience the chaos of that moment or whether it's you being a single dad of 4, how does don't worry translate now with these 4 girls that, yeah, they're young.

Your girls are young. Yeah. Um, you know what's funny is this is again part of my personality, but I literally thought to myself the night that Winter died, okay, I got this. Like, it was just, it was my new reality. And I deal in reality, like, I don't deal in abstract, I deal in reality. I'm like, okay, I got this. And that was where the rest of the world is like, oh my God, I'm never gonna do this by myself. That was a naive statement because I don't got it. But like, again, God would send angels into my life First of all, my sister Carmen, like, she literally told me the day that, the day of the funeral, she's like, the Lord told me, like, if you need me, I'm there.

She told you that the day of the funeral?

If you need me, I'm there.

God told me already. I mean, not that they didn't love her before, but she is a perfect gift for your family.

Yeah, she, they're comfortable with her. She calls them to the carpet on discipline stuff. Like, she's a great surrogate mom. And you know what's funny is when you think about, like, even perspective, like the girls being there, they're all there. Chaos, running in and out. They think I'm playing, like all that. It's just a hot mess. But at one moment, Olivia told me this a month later, my youngest daughter, who's very— she lives in the abstract, she's an artist type, she's very Broadway all the way. Yeah, but she— they ran outside eventually because they're like, they didn't want to be in the house. I'm like, go outside, wait for— I think your sister was on her way, a couple of neighbors were on the way. Olivia told me a month later, she said, Daddy, I looked up in the sky and there was a bird flying around in circles over the house. And she goes, I thought to myself, maybe that's an angel coming to get mommy. And you talk about perspective, and this girl's 9 years old, barely 9 years old at the time. And look, it was probably just a bird flying around, but in the end, I'm like, thank you, Lord, that my daughter can have a perspective that maybe there's an angel coming to get her mom. And maybe it was an angel. I'm mystical enough to think that maybe angels fly in the form of birds at this point.

So anyway, yeah, you have concerns, but I think just in the normal scheme of things, it didn't catapult you into a cesspool of anxiety and worry.

Well, even though it doesn't seem that way, even, you know, you, for example, Chrystal Hurst got more Voxer— Voxer's like a walkie-talkie app— she got more Voxer messages from me in the last 2 weeks about me dealing with daughter stuff, because at this point, the hardest thing for me isn't providing isn't even relating. I relate to my girls really well, but it's in dealing with discipline stuff. I don't have a regulator now. My sister's there and she can help me regulate, but like Winter and I, we're perfect complements. So like if I'm overreacting, she'll be like, "John, stop overreacting." Or if she's overreacting, I'll do the same. Or if she's like— she'd look at me, especially recently as we have one that's a teenager and one going into teenage years, she'd look at me and go, "You just let her say that to you like that?" And I'd be like, "Bro!" I'd catch myself. I didn't even I didn't even realize that's what happened. So I've sent more messages to Chrystal Hurst about, hey, do you think I'm doing this right? You know, what should I do differently? And so that, I mean, even, you know, your, what do you call it, the dedication of the book to Alina, the fact that Winter wrote all these books to her daughters, and now even their aunt, cousin, whatever we call her, is writing a book about, you know, showing up for your life as a, for teenage girls. Like, for me, like, God has sent us so many surrogates in a Is surrogate the right word? I mean, he sent us all these different people into our lives that are stepping in.

I mean, Priscilla just looked at Winter, or Winter, because you know, I keep calling Alina Winter, looked at Alina, you know, and she just said, you know, we got you, we got you. We're just like, yeah, I mean, yeah, this is what we have always done. We just gonna keep doing it in a different way.

Yeah. And even like our life right now, like the fact, I mean, this is like my 5th time in Dallas since Winter, but we moved. This is at least my 5th time in Dallas since Winter passed. So it's just, we're able to be here. We're able to see family. God's just given, you know, just with writing and the ministry, um, we don't feel lost. We don't feel on our own, and I don't feel scared. I probably should because I've got 4 girls that are going into the teenage years, but I think I'm just optimistic enough.

We can learn a lot from you. So one of the things Winter, um, talked to me about about is, you know, all her yeses and her nos. Saying yes to God, I'm being willing to say no to other things. And increasingly we saw this funnel of the things she was saying yes to and all the things she would say no to because she was focused on what God was teaching, telling her to do. Um, in this season of your life, this new season of your life, what does that look like? What, what are you— how does that translate for you, for your family, for your girls. What does saying yes look like and what does saying no look like?

Yeah, so I'm still learning that. You know, where I— 'Cause nos are hard for achievers. They can't be. Yeah, so where I've had this hopefulness about life and optimism, Winter had this ability to— 'Cause what it comes down to is not being a people pleaser. Like, she was able to say no 'cause she was not concerned about—

She's like, I don't care.

She loved people. I love you. She loved her family. You'll be all right. But she'd be okay to talk to her sister.

She wouldn't answer my phone when I called sometimes.

Yeah, so she was able to do that. And for me, I'm learning what it looks like to say no and to not be a people pleaser, because my yes is typically I want to please others. I have to please others. I have to do this. You know, my counselor asked me 2 days ago, he said, are you happy? And I said, you know, it's an interesting question. I said, I I feel too responsible to be happy. And he said, I'm not concerned about the word responsible. He said, I'm concerned about the too, because the too insinuates that you're being more responsible than you can even afford mentally, physically, emotionally to be. And a lot of that too responsible is me owning the emotions of others, the expectations of others, things like that. So I'm trying— I'm working on what it looks it's like to say no and to funnel where I'm just only saying yes to the things that God's asked me to do because I'm a people pleaser at the end of the day and I struggle with saying yes because I want— and it doesn't come from a place of— it doesn't come from this— it comes from a pure place. Like my yes is I want people to be happy. You want to. I love people. I'm relational.

It's not begrudgingly. You want to.

But if that kills me Or if that throws me off the end emotionally and I can't provide for my daughters, or out of priority, or I get home at night and I'm miserable with my kids because I'm just exhausted from all the tasks. Yeah. Um, then that's not good or right. Um, so I'm working on that. But what's funny is, as a mystic now, I literally hear Wicha's voice all the time.

Like, I was just— I was sitting here thinking, yeah, when he thinks he's talking, I'm gonna tell him she's in my head all the time. She was in my head People are always in your head, but she's really loud now. Yeah, she's really— now be still, be quiet, just wait, making a big deal out of nothing, calm down.

So over our bed, we redid our bedroom right before we moved. We did like a— not a renovation, but a makeover on our bedroom about a month, 2 months before we moved out of our house in Dallas. And there are these pictures that Winter got, and one set, and they were over our bed, and One said, "Be." The other one said, "Still." And now in our new home, over our bed is "Be Still." So I sit in the chair across from our bed and I look at that all the time and I just see Winter just being like, "Fool." And she wouldn't call me fool, but she'd be thinking to herself, "Fool, relax." Like, just be still. And you know, I keep hearing that song in my head, you know, "In the quiet, in the stillness, I know that that you're God. Like, you know, I get myself so busy trying to do for God, do for God, do for God. And Winter and God both are like, fool, be still. You know?

So I'm working on it. Speaking of being a mystic, the Sunday after she passed, we walked into church and I was, you know, I was doing okay because I'm usually pretty good at holding myself together. But I walked in a little late and they were singing, it's your breath in my lungs. And I mean, in that moment I just thought, Yeah, you know, what's the—

um, you know, another cool mystical story about that. We move into our new neighborhood and I'm walking my dog and this couple, older couple, walks up walking their dog and I start talking to them and they introduce themselves and they're the parents of one of the All Sons and Daughters, uh, band members. And I literally walked back in my house and my girls were playing YouTube videos and that song was playing playing on YouTube when I walked back in my house.

So it's just like, all right, this is too much. But I think that, you know, God has continually shown up in a way like that with our family where it stings and it hurts. And you know, I said it last night to Alina, I wish your mom were here, really. But God has continuously and regularly said, just so you know, this passed through my hands. And he has been overflowing with goodness in so many ways, way more than we could talk about.

Yeah, there's, there's—

on here. And she's still speaking because you just launched the next chapter of For Girls Like You, the magazine that she created with her girls in mind. Yeah. So the ministry continues, which I'm so glad that you've— I mean, I know that you wouldn't have had it any other way, but that you've done what it takes to keep that going so that girls can continue to be ministered to. Yeah. But even in her death, the ministry God gave her, the yes that she gave him, it's still going. And your girls are still going too. It's honestly what— You're still going too.

It's what makes me the most grateful is that God allowed her to accomplish her mission. Like, it wasn't like— Yep. I said this at the funeral, I think, that she lived more life in her 38 years than most people live in double that. And that allowed her to accomplish her mission. The scripture Acts 13 says David served the purposes of God for his generation and and then he fell asleep. And your dad always preaches on that scripture. I've heard him preach on it at least 50 times.

But now you know what it looks like.

Now I know what it looks like.

We know what it looks like for a girl in a compacted period of time to live a life and for us to know that when she got to heaven's gate, she got a well done. Well done. Very clear. Very clear. Thanks. Love you. Love you too.