Hallmark is a Liar

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You need a taco? Pick me up. When modern life gets rough, Grab the timeless taste you love. Passo the old El Paso. Hey, welcome back to the Naked Marriage Podcast. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast, we undress the truth about sex, intimacy, and lifelong love. And I'm so excited about today's episode. We have our first ever live studio gu, and she is awesome. Ashley, why don't you tell us a little about our guest today?

That's right. We have Dr. Cassie Reed. She's the director of the Master of Marriage and Family Therapy graduate degree program at the King's University, and she is the founder and director of Cassie Reed Counseling. She has her PhD in marriage and family therapy from Texas Women's University. She's been married for 12 years and has two beautiful daughters. And she has an amazing book that is all about managing the stress of the holidays and how it affects your family. So you guys are in for a real treat. Hey, Cassie, we are so excited to have you as our first guest, and welcome to the podcast, the Naked Marriage Podcast. Our very first guest, Ms. Cassie.

No. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. And it's such an important topic we're diving into today, and Cassie's got some great expertise on this, a great book about this that we'll plug later in the podcast. But we're entering into the holiday crazy time, and there's a lot of good that goes with it, but it amplifies whatever's going on in your life. I feel like. So the good things get better and. But the hard things seem to get a lot harder. And things that were a little bit stressful, those family dynamics that were a little bit tense, the financial pressure, that was a little bit there. It just gets blown out of the water sometimes. And so we're gonna just have a conversation over the next 25 minutes or so just about how to invite more peace into your marriage, your home, your extended family, this Christmas season. And, yeah, it's something I need. So I'm excited about this conversation.

You want to learn?

So, Cassie, how do we do it? How do we invite more peace and less stress during this chaotic time of year?

Oh, that is a big question. There's a lot of ways. I think the biggest thing that I find is really allowing the Holy Spirit some room in your holiday. I think we get so caught up in the hubbub of everything, of what we're doing and the events and the thing that Gets shut out is our ability to hear him and just to really have vision for what happens. And so that's really the crux of what I experienced personally, as well as what I feel to teach people about the holiday season.

No, that's so good. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I know. We don't wanna be running around totally missing the entire point of why we're celebrating, right?

Very true.

Very true. I know. Actually, just early in November, our kids were talking about what they wanted for Christmas. And it hit me really hard, and I got really upset, didn't I, sweetie? I was like, how dare you just.

Tell what you want?

I was talking about this. I kind of let it get the. Brought out the worst in me. And then I kind of went back and my son was like, why was that so upsetting? And I was like, cooper, let's first of all celebrate Thanksgiving. But let's also realize that Christmas is not about what you want. I mean, I understand that. I wanna know what you want for Christmas, but for you to be. That's all you're thinking about right now. It just is really upsetting to me because you're missing the entire point. And so I totally get what you're saying. It's like we want to have the holy spirit flowing through us because it also spills onto our kids, and we gotta really keep that, you know, as the heart of our home, especially during the holidays.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think that something that can stress people out at Christmas is the comparison trap game, because social media has made it where you see, oh, look, little Shirley's family's elf on the shelf, like, built a new log cabin in their backyard.

Elf on the shelf.

Personally cursed little elf on the shelf. It's like, it's so much. And then you got Pinterest and Instagram, and everybody's posting these highlight reels.

Oh, my goodness.

And the whole Advent season where you're like the prince of peace, you know, Jesus is so edged out. There's no peace anywhere. It's all about the competition of trying to keep up. So especially with our kids, when they're easy to get pulled into this comparison trap game of what everybody else is doing and getting. How do we keep our families focus on what Christmas is really all about and still enjoy all the festivities, but not let it stress us out and not play that. That consumeristic game that just chokes out all of the joy?

Well, you know, one of the things I see at least, and I struggle with personally, really, truly, my whole diving into this topic came out of my personal frustration of the holiday. I remember waking up one morning and it was about 7am the tree was on, and I was just fuming at my family. And I just started writing, and I was just irritated. Cause it was really because of expectations. But I realized that I was a crammer and that I wanted to shove every single event. And even still to this day, I have to check myself, because I'll Google. I'll be like, okay, Dallas Christmas events. Yeah, I'm that person too.

I get it.

I'm like, we need to go here, here, here, here, here. And then every weekend, we're like running like crazy people barely time to function, just to see the sights, you know? And so I think setting the tone for your kids is a huge thing of where I've found that over the years. I have a blended family. And so we've decided we have traditions. We have things that we adhere to and they look forward to. And when we decide to add one, we talk to them about it. But they kind of know what to expect. And I think that helps because then it's not like, well, Johnny's family went to London for Christmas. Well, that's not our tradition. So our tradition is we stay here.

Yeah.

There's so much to do.

There's so much.

We'll go to the Galleria.

No, it's so true.

That is so true.

Absolutely.

The blended family issue, I'm glad you brought that up, because I feel like from a lot of people that write us and are dealing specifically with, okay, the holidays are complicated enough, but now we've got this blended family dynamic where we're, you know, the custody situation might be tense or trying to maybe feel like you're competing within the family. There's an extra layer of stress that can come in the blended family. So can you just talk about out of experience to those who are listening that are there? They're like, you know, the blended family situation is really causing extra stress. How can I be an ambassador of peace in all of that?

Yeah. You know, I think just being. I was blessed to be introduced to my stepdaughter when she was 2, and she's 15 now. So we've had a lot of time to grow together. But I think what I had to do was stop placing the expectations on myself. And that's really where it lied. I kept thinking I was placing them on her family or the other side. You know, we always talk a lot, but really what it was, it was me. It was me saying I wanted things to be a certain way. And when I was able to let that go and realize it wasn't about me, it was about her. And my desire to be right, or my desire to do it this way, or my desire to prove a point ended up making her suffer. And so when I realized that it's about her, and it's about creating a great experience for her, and who cares what anyone else thinks? If we feel peace about it, it's what our. It lines up with our family values, and it makes her have a great experience, then we're gonna do it. And so that's really changed a lot of things. And what I found secretly, and I don't know if she'll hear this, but is that she kind of wants to come to our house now for the holidays. We get to spend most holidays with her just because she enjoys that and she is a priority. And not that she isn't her mom's, but she just loves to come and be part of our traditions. And so it's so cool how it works itself out when you get yourself out of the way. But I will say, I just want to say one thing empathetically, as a stepmom to all the stepmoms and stepdads, it's a hard go, y'. All. Sometimes, you know, it's not so easy to just. When you have. The bottom line is you have someone else controlling your life from afar, and sometimes it's someone you don't even want to control it anymore. Right. And it's just. You really have to kind of get that in alignment because it is what it is, and it's an unchangeable thing. And you gotta love your kids. Because what I find is a lot of families in my practice wake up and they're like, oh, man, my kid's 18. I spent all these years fighting with the other side, and now, what? The kid is just lost at where to find home.

That's so good.

That is. I mean, that's such great advice, I think, too, with blended families, but really with all families, I think shopping and kind of the expectations we have for what we're going to give our kids, you know, that can be really kind of trying. And it's hard, too, with our children sometimes, to establish, well, our family does things this way, their family might do this. I mean, how do you think we should navigate that?

That's a tough. That's a tough one for sure. I think what you do is you have to set your standard and stick to it. Like, I don't want to Let someone else dictate what my family chooses to do because of what they do. Kind of like you were saying that. But it's so easy to be like, oh, my gosh, they're doing X, Y and Z. Or they bought them this, this, and this. And, you know, just come to the point where it's like, this is our budget. This is what we're gonna do. These are our traditions. This is what we do as a family. These are our values. And they're unwavering. Like, I don't wanna waver because my emotions get tugged on. Cause that's really what it is. It's a competition. We wanna win. You know, so. And I found there were a couple Christmases. I won't lie. I'll tell them myself. I'm pretty transparent. But it's that, you know, you go all out and you're like, ha, ha.

We won Christmas.

Like you. And then you're literally like, you know, as she's surrounded by all of the items and there's, like, zero, you know, that isn't what she wanted, you know?

Right.

And I found I. You know, then I'm like, I am hundreds of dollars poor. And I.

And all that stuff's gonna be at Goodwill.

Yes. And I did that for me. Yeah.

That's so true.

I do sometimes. Something that helped me a few Christmases ago tell a quick story that kind of ties to expectations. I wanted to create this perfect Christmas moment, and I wanted to do it by building a gingerbread house. Right? So we were at Walmart. They were these $8 gingerbread houses. And the children were like, please, dad, please, let's build it. And I was like, you know what? We're gonna have an epic night to remember. It's gonna be like a Charles Dickens novel. We're gonna be gathered around a fire, and children are gonna be like, God bless his father. You're the best father. And it was gonna be gumdrops. And it was gonna be the most perfect gingerbread house ever. But on the way home from Walmart, the kids were fighting over this box where the gingerbread house was. And by the time we got home and we dumped out the contents on the kitchen table, it was broken. There were shards of broken gingerbread. And my one kid's crying like, it's broken. It's never. And I was so mad that I went to, like, throw the whole thing away. Like, you kids, you ruined Christmas. And Ashley said, why are you throwing it away? I said, because it's ruined. It's never gonna look like the picture on the box. And she very wisely said, it doesn't have to look like the picture on the box. And so we dumped out all those broken contents, and we didn't make a gingerbread house because there weren't walls, but we made the most beautifully misshapen gingerbread cookies, and we were covered in icing and gumdrops and we laughed. And for me, it was a turning point because I have this expectation, frustration a lot of times where I have a picture in my mind of how things need to look, and it needs to look like the picture on the box. The gingerbread house has to look like the picture on the box, or else it's failed. And I think a lot of us carry around a deeper expectation of we think our family, our life needs to look like this picture on the box. We had in our mind of what a perfect family is supposed to be at Christmas, and it doesn't really exist. And what I think God calls us to do instead is take the broken pieces of our gingerbread houses and our lives and to give it to him as a gift and then to just enjoy what he has given us. And it might end up being something far better than the, like, stale picture on the box ever could have been.

I mean, honestly, till this day, we still buy gingerbread houses, but they just break them up.

And we break them up now. We don't even try.

We just become a new tradition.

Yeah, I love that. It's great. That's so awesome. You know, it's so interesting because that's actually what prompted me somewhat to even write the book that I wrote, because I just think the expectations of. I wanted to call it Hallmark is.

A Liar, even though we love those movies, but it's not real.

I know it doesn't always end like that. And you know what? I find this expectation.

Hallmark is a liar.

That's what they. Of course. You know, I have all the respect for Hallmark.

Candace Cameron, we're coming for you. You are lying to us.

No. But everything ends with the bow. And the grandparents are sitting there, and they're all around the fire, and it's just so happy, and everyone's sipping cocoa. And there are some families that can't take three hours in a home with their family, let alone three days. So it's just real. But I think with expectations, I see it, like, it's not an on off switch either. Yes, I've made the box, or it's in the trash, which is so common for me. And of course, I'm Writing to myself, but it's that it's a dimmer. And I think what we do is if we completely don't meet them, it's a failure. And if we meet them, it's a success. And I think that's what happens with the holidays is we paint this picture of, you know, we took my three year old, I have a three year old daughter, and we took her to see Christmas lights. And I remember, you know, we're just all piled in the car, it's warm. We just are, you know, all stuck in there and we're like, we're gonna go. She's gonna love it. She sat in the backseat and begged for goldfish the entire time. And I just remember being like, this is horrible. Like, we're all like, get us out of the car. Get her some goldfish. You know, and it was just like, you know, you planned this whole big thing and it felt. I remember feeling like a failure afterwards.

Yeah. And I was like, I think we've all been there.

Yes. And I'm like, no, I'm not a failure. This just was an event. You know, we had a memory we laugh about. But I think people take it too personally. And that's what breaks my heart is don't own that too much your expectation, you know, don't own when it doesn't.

I'm a bad mom or a bad dad if this doesn't pan out exactly like this Hallmark moment.

Right.

Oh my goodness. We've had. I'm just laughing, thinking about all the moments, the goldfish moments. Like that is like normal for us, you know, with the Santa, you try to get the perfect Santa picture and they're just like crying in most of them, or once your kids get too old for Santa. But you want them. Cause you have younger kids, you want them all in the picture. They look like they'd rather die, you know, than be in the picture. But you know, for us, and I know a lot of people listening our Christmases, we usually have to travel home or even just during the holidays at some point. And we live far from our family and we have for a long time. And so thankfully our families live within 30 minutes of each other. But we, you know, we make the big trek home and we see everybody. And I remember in the early years of us doing this, we would just almost kill ourselves to try to make everyone happy. And it was literally impossible. And we've been doing this a long time now.

We bounce around like, like a pinball.

Hormone trying to go to everything, trying to disappointing Everybody. I mean. Yeah. And so now we're actually getting ready to go home. And we were like, we just have to go. Knowing we're gonna do the best we can, but everybody's probably gonna be a little disappointed, and we just have to be okay with that. I mean, it really is like we just have to do the best we can as a family and not, you know. Cause what we found is it was making us kind of lash out at our kids because we were just, you know, trying to get to everybody. And then you're also, like you had mentioned earlier, we're trying to kind of understand and rise to the occasion of the different family dynamics. And there's usually, you know, somebody dealing with something. I mean, we've had. I mean, it's always. There's always something eventful. And we always like to remind anyone we're talking to that there's just no perfect Hallmark family out there.

Oh, you're right.

I mean, you can have a great. A great family that you're proud of, but every family has stuff.

Yes, yes.

And I think, you know, like, you've talked about Cassie. The expectations are so key.

No, I think it's true. And I love embracing authenticity, you know, and it's just been interesting to see how just even in starting to write about this and starting. It's actually made a shift in my own family, you know, which has been really cool just for them to read and kind of see. Like, let's just be authentic, let's be real, let's be transparent, and let's say what's really happening. And I think there's power in that, because what we do is we make assumptions of what other people want. So, like, when you talk about going home, I can totally relate to that. You know, I want everyone to be happy, and I want everyone to love me and see my kids. And it's so great, you know, the intention is so pure, but it ends up being something the enemy takes and uses again against us. Cause you feel like again you fail, right? You know, oh, I didn't see her for long enough. Or did we visit enough and did they get to see the kids do this or this? And, you know, I think you just have to lay that down and if you're honest about it, you know, and just say, hey, we're gonna do what we can. We're here. Gosh, you love us so much that you wanna see us. That's cool.

Yeah.

You know, we love you, too, and we. Trust me, if we could see you all day, every day and divide ourselves. We would do it, but we can't, you know, and so I think that's a huge thing for people to. To just focus on. Is that what's the positive in it? They wanna see me. Some families don't wanna see their family.

That's so true.

That is a positive. So many people are fighting over us.

Exactly. I mean, what I hear Cassie really saying is getting back to gratitude. You know, I think gratitude goes a long way. Being thankful that your family wants to see you, being thankful that you have, you know, a car that can get you there. You know, being thankful that you guys are healthy enough to do it. I mean, a lot of people are ill around the holidays and they can't make those travels. So, yeah, I think gratitude just seems to change everything, doesn't it? Burlington Donaras cincuenta Mila brigos nuevos para yudara los necesitados de todo el pais por medio de nuestra collaboracion con delivering.

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Oh, my God, I love it.

Real life stories of Christmas. Skidmark. Of all this crazy stuff that happens. All right, so that's the random idea for the day. Gotta switch it. Switch gears. My mind's going to all the movies we can make. I mean, it's a billion dollar idea.

I want in. I want in.

We've talked a lot about kind of the kid issue, but since it is the Naked marriage podcast, we try to always also have a specific marriage tie in. And I do think that the stress of the holidays can come between a husband and wife, like very few things. The financial stress of you're trying to make all these things happen and trying to evenly split time. And both the husband and wife have different expectations of what they want it to look like. The most wonderful time of the year can end up being the most stressful time of the year on a marriage. And so how specifically do we focus on our marriage and be unified in the midst of this stress and then start trying to find ways to take stress off of each other instead of adding stress to each other?

Oh yeah, well, you know, like Pastor Jimmy is so amazing about teaching how your marriage is first. You know, when your kids, before your kids come, your marriage exists. And after your kids move out of the house, your marriage exists. And I think we lose sight. And even like I said, just having a three year old, easy to see that it's just they need you and so you become so consumed. So I think they keep the main thing, the main thing which is your relationship. And I think communication is key. With the busyness of everything, we've gotta be able to talk to each other. We've gotta be able to decide, okay, what's our budget? Like what are we gonna spend? And I think it's easy, but then to even make decisions together. If we're gonna go over it, let's decide it together. Let's not me go out and spend hundreds of dollars or even $50 without him being somewhat privy that we're gon or do that, you know, And I think in the relationship too, it's crucial that you figure out the separate families. And if it's okay, I can talk about that just as your in laws, you know, I think that's a huge factor because we have two places where we learn what tradition and what the holidays feel like.

Oh yeah.

You know, and each of them very rarely are the same, you know. Well, my family does this and you know, my husband's family always celebrated Christmas Eve and did gifts on Christmas Eve. Well, we do Christmas morning, you know, so it's like which do we do in our family? And I think the key is that you figure out what's our tradition.

Right.

And how do we still honor, you know, I want to honor my family and I want to honor his family. But we also have to figure out what we're going to do because they can't dictate that all the time because then that doesn't leave for good feelings.

Right.

Because you're your own family unit and you can kind of have your own traditions. You know, I think another way that we can really kind of keep our marriage going strong during the holidays is, you know, putting something on your spouse that they clearly don't like doing. And I'll just share a quick story. So Dave is not a fan of putting up Christmas lights outside. Like, he pretty much hates it.

I turn into the Grinch, and, like.

We didn't have a tall enough ladder when we used to live in Georgia. And he almost, like, he was just trying desperately to get it done. And he got up on the roof and then, like, could not get off and was gonna jump off the roof. And I'm like, no, no. And I'm like, running to the neighbor's house. I'm like, can I borrow your ladder?

Like.

Cause, you know, it's like, something he hates doing. So I just. That year, I don't even remember what year it was, I was like, we're just not gonna do, like, we're gonna put some lights on the bushes. We're gonna stop all this with the higher lights that we put over, you know, near the roof line. And we're gonna put a stake in the ground with one of those superimposed laser lights.

That puts lights on your house.

That puts lights on your house. And it has been like. We just don't, like. It's just too bad.

I always make fun of her for watching qvc. It's crazy. Cause I think it's, like, the lamest thing to watch. But I was never more attracted to you than when you bought one of those things.

I saw it, and I was like, that's the answer.

We put it in the ground. It took, like, two minutes to turn on, and I didn't have to get on the roof. And I think we made out for, like, an hour. At the time, I would have been hanging the lights.

But, you know, I think so many times we think, but this is what I want you to do. And, you know, this is how it should be. And we could, you know, maybe get a ride over that. Right. If it's not. If we don't have icicle lights, it's not Christmas. But really, it's like, no. I mean, if my husband hates this, it's going against, you know, the joy of the holiday, and it's making us mad at each other. It's just not worth it. It's not worth fighting over Christmas lights. And so you just have to find solutions that really kind of ease the tension between the two.

Yeah, it's a lot of stepping aside from your own preferences to serve. Serve one another. Because I don't we got all these inflatables in our yard right now, which I think are so tacky and just dumb looking. And I would make fun of anybody to put them up. And now I'm that guy.

We're the people.

I'm the guy where I drive up to my own house and I'm like, oh, that's tacky. But the kids love it.

They get so excited.

So, yeah, we do it, we do it for each other. It's another opportunity coming back to the kind of the broader family conversation. Yes, but you know, in laws, the extended family. I do think this is where a lot of the stress can come in at the holidays. And Cassie, I wanna share a quote from your book. Cause I think if we unpack this a little bit, there's so much wisdom in it. Said married individuals need to feel that their family members can love their partners almost as much as they do. And man, I want this to be true for our own kids when they bring wives home, you know, someday that it's such a safe place where they know they're loved, they know that they're accepted. So, Cassie, talk to us about how we can cultivate that kind of love and what to do when it's not there. Like what to do when you do feel like you're going into an in law situation or extended family situation and maybe the love just isn't there. Let's just put it that way. So how do we get through that?

Well, the first thing I think that you have to do is you have to be sure that you really do the leave and cleave thing.

Oh, yeah.

You know, I see so many people who wanna complain about their spouse to their family of origin. So they're going back home. And you know, one of the things my parents said to my husband, we've been married 12 years, is they said if, if you guys ever have a difficulty, Cassie can't come back here. And I mean, I thought that was so weird, you know, but really what they said was, we're not gonna let her come stay here or retreat here or find solace here or comfort here because she's gonna be married to you. And you guys have to figure it out, work it out. It was really powerful. And I think that's what happens so many times is, you know, you'll go to your mom or your dad or whoever's sister, oh, he's just making me mad, or, oh, she's being ridiculous. And what that does is that breeds for them to make an opinion about the person that you love. Then you come back and y' all are great. And they're, like, trying to reconcile why you just said they were not nice yesterday and today you're making out. Which do we follow?

It's so true.

Cause they don't have the same equity. And really, they're following your lead. And so I think when you lead with preference and you lead prioritizing your spouse and you lead honoring them, you may have it out in the car afterwards. Let's be honest, right? Like, there's been many holidays, my husband and I will get in the car, and it's like the drive home. We're just hashing it out, but they're not seeing that, you know? And I think there's power in that. That's not living inauthentically, if that's even the word. But it's just the fact that they don't need to see any room to not love him as much as I do. And I think sometimes it does not happen that way.

Sure.

And this is the trick that I always. It's not even really a trick, but it's just asking the Holy Spirit to see them, the person that can't love them. You know, it's like, let me see them. And many times he's so gracious, and it never looks the same. But it's just this vision of the person that you really see their heart or you really see what they're struggling with or why they can't love them. Sometimes it's a parent that just loves you so much, they don't wanna let you go, even though you've been married 20 years, you know, or they just don't. They want. They have their own insecurity or their own fear or their own failures that they're feeling, and they're trying to make it up, you know, so if you ask the Holy Spirit to see that man, that gives you power over it. And then you're able to be like, oh, gosh, Grandma. Oh, gosh, dad. Oh, gosh, brother. You know, you're able to know why they're that way and why they have a hard time loving your spouse and.

Kind of approach them more tenderly. Because I do think it's easy to be on the defensive. I think there's times, too, though, where you were talking about maybe, you know, a spouse may feel closer to their family than they do their family of origin than they do their own spouse. And so they allow their family to talk badly about their spouse. And I just wanna say, like, as spouses, we really set the tone to our families about how, you know, we get how our families can talk about our spouse and how they can treat our spouse. We set that tone. So if we're being hateful to our spouse in front of our family, that's saying, oh, we can just lash out, you know, at our spouse whenever we want to. And it's very, very toxic. And I. You know, we receive messages all the time from people where this is the case where feel like they're under attack the minute they go to the Christmas gathering of their spouse's family. And then sometimes what happens is that spouse stops going. And so what you see are spouses dividing and celebrating Christmas with their families of origin and not really bringing their spouse with them. And I just wanna say, guys, don't do that. You need to go as a family unit. You need to go together. You don't need to split and divide. You need to bring peace to your families about whatever's going on and say, listen, my spouse is one with me. I wanna bring my spouse to everything. We wanna go through everything together. And so we need to work this out, you know, and you can't talk about my spouse this way. I love you guys, but this is who I've chosen to marry. You cannot approach my spouse with the disrespect that you've been having lately. And I think once we lay down that boundary, your family will eventually rise to it. I mean, they may not immediately, but they will eventually rise to it.

No, you know, it's interesting because I've actually. I was just saying in writing this book that I actually have had such a positive thing with my own family happen. And that's ex. What we've seen is now I have two sisters and they're married as well. And, you know, and I just wanna give some people some hope with this because so many people feel like, oh, it's never gonna change. This is how it's gonna be. And it's just easier if we go separate or it's easier. It's not gonna be different. They are not gonna change. And what I found is my sister and I and, you know, we kind of put a stake in the ground and said, we're not gonna do it this way anymore. It was honoring, it was respectful. It was a healthy boundary. There was nothing, you know, bad about us putting the stake in the ground, but it's honestly caused what they would call in therapy world, systemic shift. It's caused the family of origin to shift now and how they behave to shift. And because we're not gonna tolerate the, you know, disrespecting the spouse, or we're not gonna tolerate you talking bad or having this backbiting or having these sidebar conversations. This is how we're choosing to set boundaries. And, man, it's just been a blessing to my family to see the fruit of that and just to see that change is possible. When you let the Holy Spirit lead, change is possible. And I just wanna encourage people that you probably might be looking at a situation that seems unchangeable. You might see something in your family that you're like, it has been this way for 80 years. It's never gonna be different. But one word from the Holy Spirit can change it. One person acting differently, one bit of peace that your family brings. I wanna be the family that comes in and everyone goes, yes. Yeah. Like, we bring peace. They bring a spirit of peace. Yeah. And so I just want to believe that for people and I just want to encourage people with that is to find hope this holiday.

I love that. I mean, I think I know the listeners right now. There's so many where this is just really motivating them to go in with more peace. And I think a lot of it, just like you said, Cassie, it starts with the Holy Spirit. And how do we achieve that? How do we have that peace? It's through prayer. It's through praying God, bring peace to this relationship. And even if that other person in my family isn't wanting to achieve peace, help me to still be a peacemaker and be at peace myself. Cause sometimes, and it even says this in the Word, you know, you have to do your best to achieve peace. But it says it in such a way in the Bible where it's like, but you do what you can, but sometimes people depends on you. Right? Whatever you can do. But if they're choosing not to have peace, that's really their choice. But that doesn't mean it rocks our world. Because we can still have the peace of Christ.

That's right. Nobody can take that away.

Exactly, Exactly.

That's. It's so good, man. We could talk about this for days and days. But a great way to continue the conversation is to pick up Cassie's book. We've been pulling nuggets of wisdom from it this whole conversation. So, Cassie, before we wrap up, tell us about your book and specifically where we can find it.

Sure, sure. The book is called Open the Gift of Holiday Sanity, Not Hallmark Is a Liar.

The next one.

And you can get it on Amazon. It's available in kindle or it's available just to order. The best way is to Google unwrapped and my name, which is Cassie Reed. R E I D. So. Or you can just Google my name or put my name in the search bar on Amazon and find it. So, yeah, that's the best way to get it. And it's just a great little read. It's 25 chapters, so it's one of those books that you can just pick up and read a chapter if you like, or put it down, pick another one up, read a chapter. And it takes about just three or four minutes to read each chapter. So it's really easy.

So pick it up, take it on the road trip with you when you're headed to those holiday gatherings, and it'll help you enter in with the right frame of mind.

I love it.

And, Cassie, thanks so much for being with us today.

Oh, no, it was so fun.

Yeah, we've had a ball.

I love talking about the holidays.

We've had a ball, and we're gonna launch our new skidmart network. It's a rival Hallmark, and it's gonna be fun. But, sweetie, would you close us out in prayer? I just think this episode would be a great one to end in prayer because there's so much happening this time of year, and a lot of folks listening maybe just have anxiety or stress about what they're getting ready to go into these next few weeks, and just. Let's just invite the prince of peace to bring peace right where they are, and I think that'd be a great way to wrap up.

All right, let's pray. Lord, I just thank you so much for what we have learned during this time talking with Cassie. And I just pray that we can go into Christmas with a spirit of peace, Lord, with the Holy Spirit ruling in our hearts, Lord. And no matter what we are facing in our families, even if they're the toughest of situations and we're kind of limping in there, I just pray that you help us to maintain our peace, to approach our family with fresh eyes, eyes of hope, eyes of forgiveness, eyes of a willingness to rebuild trust where trust has been broken. I pray that when we come into the home, just like Cassie said, Lord, that people kind of breathe a sigh of relief and that we just kind of bring water to the fire, Lord, in our families. I also pray, Lord, that we have realistic expectations that we don't feel like we need to keep up with the family next door, that we just have the right budget for our family, Lord, and more than anything that we keep Jesus at the very heart of the season. Because that is why we are celebrating, Lord. We are celebrating that you gave your very son so that we could be forgiven, Lord. And we thank you for that. And we just pray that we can be more and more like Jesus every day. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Amen. We'll see you guys next time.