Episode 476 - Lesli Hudson-Reynolds

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, a songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is where I discuss music, movies, books, pop culture, theology, and more with friends, colleagues, and sometimes just by myself. Now make sure to let me know what you think of today's episode by leaving me a review on iTunes or by tweeting at me @RickLeeJames on Twitter. And please join my mailing list at RickLeeJames.com where you can receive an email every time a new episode is released. By the way, in case you're interested in a daily dose of kindness and encouragement beyond this podcast, I also run the Twitter account @MrRogersSay where I post daily quotes from Fred Rogers, one of the voices in my head. Well, I guess that's it for the intro, so sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of Voices in My Head.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, and I'm so grateful for all of you who are listening today. Are you or someone you know struggling with gender identity? Do you feel marginalized, misunderstood, ignored, or even judged? Well, this episode may be a help to you. My guest today on Voices in My Head is Leslie Hudson Reynolds. Leslie serves as Director of Donor Relations as well as resident gender identity expert for Posture Shift. A leading training and consulting resource for church and ministry leaders on LGBT+ inclusion and care. Leslie also assists the Culture Shift's president, Bill Henson, in managing Guiding Families direct care for transgender young people and their families. Prior to joining the Posture Shift team, Leslie spent 15 years touring the US and Europe as production stage manager for numerous Broadway musicals, ballets, and plays. They recently began pursuing their MDiv in Theology and Biblical Studies. Leslie lives in Tennessee, and they are a huge fan of the New England— is it the New England Patriots? Am I— am I okay? All right, I, I am such a non-sportsy person that I, I was just like taking a stab at it there. So thanks for, uh, for giving me the chance to, to get it wrong, but I said it right. So, and lastly, in our introduction, the pronouns we will be using today for Leslie, it will be they and them. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. So Leslie, welcome to Voices in My Head.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

My goodness, I am so glad that we had a chance finally. It feels like it's been forever, but I guess it's only been 3 or 4 weeks since we were together in Kansas City for the Love Wins, uh, the Love to Love conference sponsored by Love Wins. And it was so great meeting you there and, and hearing your story and honestly laughing with you, crying with you, worshiping with you, and just hearing your story. So I'm glad to have a chance to give my listeners hopefully a similar experience today, just getting to know you a little bit more. So thank you for being here.

My pleasure.

Well, let's start just our visit today by diving into something that might be new for a lot of listeners, and it might even be uncomfortable at first, but I want to get into the use of correct pronouns for non-gender binary people. And I wonder if you could just help us understand, first of all, why I guess we would use those and why that is helpful and actually helps to take away pain in some situations for people. Would you mind if we just started there?

Sure, yeah, let's jump into the deep end.

Okay, that's great.

It's— let's just start out with some statistics. Um, 72% of trans people have had suicidal ideation, meaning that they have seriously considered suicide. 41% have actually attempted suicide. So 41% of anyone who identifies as non-binary, transgender, whatever under that umbrella, there are huge number. I could go into Two-Spirit, Cree, there are a number of different things that we could go into and we can honestly spend the entire 45 minutes talking about just what's under that umbrella. But 41% have actually attempted suicide. In 2019, right before the pandemic, um, the Trevor Project, who is a leading researcher in LGBT inclusion, found that you can reduce that number of suicide by up to 40% for trans people specifically by having just one adult using a trans kid's chosen name or chosen pronoun. The University of Texas followed that up in 2020 and said that's up to 60%. Now I'm horrible at math. I'm terrible. I needed somebody who was good at math to help me figure all of this out. But that takes it from 41% down to 18%, which is still a whole lot more than what would be considered a cisgender peer. So when I say cisgender, that a lot of people are going to be like, oh my goodness, transgender, non-binary. What do all of these words mean? So just so that we're all having the same conversation and we're not trying to politicize anything. And you understand that I'm talking about just some basic identities and not, not a political movement behind anything, right? Trans means across. So like if you're taking a transcontinental train, you're going across the continent, right? So there's absolutely nothing about, you know, political about that. Gender is how we identify. So you have your biological, natal, or sex assigned at birth. Those are 3 different ways of describing that. So Transgender means that my identified gender is different than my natal sex. I choose to use natal. Um, biological sex, um, can be used by some, by some super conservative Christians, um, to, uh, to just— what's the right, right phrasing? Demean what it— what gender means. Um, and then sex assigned at birth, if you say that, then a lot of, a lot of mainstream Christians are going to write you off for saying it. But natal sex seems to be something that's kind of middle of the road that everybody can agree on, so I use natal sex. Um, so that's what transgender is. Cisgender— cis means same, so that means that you're the gender that you identify as and the sex, your natal sex, are the same thing. That's what the majority of the world are. Um, there's about 1.6 million transgender adults in the US right now. So even though that's under 1%, that's still a lot of people, you know, when you're talking about 1.6 million. And if you think about 41%, so almost 50% of 1.6 million people That's 800,000 people that have attempted suicide simply because of being transgender or, or being non-binary. And when I say trans, trans is kind of an umbrella term that can mean a plethora of things. It can mean transmasculine, which means that I'm a natal female that identifies as masculine. It can mean transfeminine, which means I'm a natal male that identifies as feminine. It can mean non-binary, it can mean genderqueer, it can Two-Spirit, once again, it can mean a whole bunch of things, but the accepted just kind of, um, umbrella term right now is trans. Some people put an asterisk after it. That's kind of phasing out, and that was kind of the it thing to do for a while, but more and more you're just seeing people say trans to identify the community.

All right, well, thank you for that explainer, and I, I know a lot of people, uh, wonder about those things and maybe sometimes are afraid to ask, and I always feel like it's better to ask. And, and even to attempt to use the proper pronouns, even if we struggle with it at times, uh, just as a way of showing, um, that we're trying and that we're showing love and respect and that we want to help in this process. I— it terrifies me to think of the number of people that you just listed that have attempted to take their life, and anything that we can do to help alleviate that, uh, so many of us in the Christian community, we, we claim to be pro-life and That's one of the most pro-life things I can think of, if we can save a life in that way, for sure. So we've already probably made some people uncomfortable that are listening, and that's okay. We're going to stretch people a little bit by hearing some of your story. And as we get into your story today, you, you struck me as a person who's not only incredibly honest, um, and in telling your story— and one of the first times I met you, we were sitting in a dining hall and you started telling me some of your story, and, and I was like, wow, this is like deep territory to already go into, you know, over, over, hi, I'm Rick, you know. And, uh, and, and I also know that you are a person who is deeply in love with Jesus and that the Lord is continually transforming your life to be like Jesus, just as we all are on this journey. And we are trying to discover what it means to walk together. So in, in kind of by way of telling your story, I wonder if you could explain something really quickly because this was such a help to me. I can remember sitting at lunch with you and you were explaining to me that some Christians who are in the LGBTQ+ community, they will use language like side A, side B, side X, things like that. Could you quickly give us— just tell us what that is so people can understand? Because I often feel like The way that we, um, perceive things is often the way that the media wants to tell us. And by the media, I mean every media. Like, it doesn't matter if it's Fox News, CNN. It seems like they're so good about trying to lump everybody into one category and say, well, if you're this, then you're that and nothing else. But we are so much more than one thing. And, and people who identify like you do are also seeking Christ, and it may look a little different, but I think we need to hear that and understand that that's an important part of the journey. So is that a good place to kind of move into and then— sure, hearing your story? Okay.

Um, so before we get into kind of my story, uh, the definitions of those— first of all, if you walk up to the average LGBT person on the street who is not a Christian and ask, are you side A or side B, they're going to look at you and have no idea what in the world you're talking about. This is something that is very much Christianese, that is part of the Christian world. Um, so side A is affirming, uh, which means that God does affirm, um, a same-sex, same-gender, uh, marriage. And just like with— within the Christian community, um, with straight people, that can mean many different things. For some people, that means no sex before marriage. For some people, that means yes, sex before marriage. It can mean a plethora of things, but side A basically just says God, God bless the same-sex unions. Side B would say that sex is meant to be between a man and a woman within the confines of marriage, um, but that having an LGBT identity is not a sin in and of itself. It's what you're— what you do with that. Um, then there's Side X, which comes from the Exodus Project, or ex-gay. Which is that if you, if you still identify as gay, if you, if you still have same-sex attraction, and same-sex attraction is a language that they use, and that you'll find a lot of people that are in my age category— I'm in my late 40s— kind of cringe at. Younger kids are kind of, some are reclaiming that, that, that phraseology. But same-sex attracted, um, that if you, if you still feel that, then you are not really saved.

Okay.

That Jesus and the Spirit haven't really entered your heart. That, um, for some reason, while the rest of sanctification takes a lifetime for us, with, with your sexuality, it's immediate as soon as you're saved. Um, which is something that I've always been very confused with. Yeah. To get even more confusing, there's something called side Y, um, which is saying that you can say you're same-sex attracted but that you need to be heading towards being heterosexual. So that's where you get like your Rosaria Butterfields, your Christopher Yuans, uh, people like that who, okay, who, who say, yeah, okay, it's okay to say you're same-sex attracted, but you need to be heading towards heterosexuality. That needs to be your goal. Um, getting into my story, um, I'll tell a little bit about my story and then why I've chosen Side B.

Sure.

And why that's, um, I am Side B. Posture Shift is a Side B ministry, um, and, and why that's where I've landed. Um, grew up in the church. Um, my first crush, you know, I jokingly say this in all of my interviews, was Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. I was 4 years old.

Mine too, so, you know, rock on.

Um, followed very closely by Erin Gray in Buck Rogers, um, who was Captain Will— Captain Wilma Darling. Um, we'll never forget it. Um, but these were two women that were very big in my life. So before I even knew what, uh, what sexuality was, these are— these are the crushes that I had. Um, but it went beyond that. I didn't want to I didn't want to just be Lynda Carter's or, or Wonder Woman's girlfriend. I wanted to be her husband. I wanted to be the father of her children. Um, her boyfriend's name on, on the show was Steve, and he was my arch nemesis in life. Like, I somehow needed to destroy Steve.

Steve Trevor.

So the 4-year-old me could go marry Lynda Carter. Um, because, you know, that's how things work, right? Um, and so, so from the very, very young age, 4 years old, I knew I was going to grow up to be a man. It was kids grew up to be adults, I was going to grow up to be a man. There was no question about that. Um, I was probably about 6 or 7 when I realized, wait a minute, that's not exactly how all of this works. Um, people were using phrases like tomboy because I loved sports. I was involved in any sport I could get involved in. So I just, I clung on to that, to the word boy. So that was great, um, until I hit puberty. And when secondary sex characteristics started happening, when hips started happening and chest started happening— and this is something that, that natal males don't think about, but like when our periods start happening and stuff, then that's something for someone who has gender dysphoria that like is a monthly reminder of, of that pain. So, long story short, I had a very unfortunate interaction with a church that ended up with me leaving, tried to go back in college to a, to a student ministry, ended up doing summer mission, was working in a— as a chaplain intern in a federal prison camp. Started dating one of my, um, one of the guards at— not one of the lieutenants, actually— at the prison, and just couldn't deal with the cognitive dissonance of being a Christian and, and, um, and being gay, because I was told that I was an abomination, that I was going to burn in hell, that there was nothing that I could do to get to God, um, which for anybody listening, if you hear nothing else other than what I say right now. If you're LGBT, it's not that you can't get to God. God is chasing you. God loves you. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. And so don't believe those lies, please. Um, so I said I would, I would kind of get back to why I, why I landed Side B. Um, for me, um, I was married. My wife, uh, passed away in a rather tragic accident after a long period of illness. Um, and I, I went to this church, and the pastor would meet with me every other week, sometimes every week, and we would talk about everything under the sun about how wounded I had been by the church. About, um, the lies I had been told about, about the gospel. And he would only bring up LGBT stuff when I brought it up. He realized that there were so many other things that God needed to work on in my life.

Sure. Can I interrupt you for just a moment too? Yeah, I apologize. I know you were getting into the story, but I think it might be important for our listeners to understand too that your, your wife died in a very tragic way. We don't have to get into that, but I think if you— if I remember from you telling the story as well, it was partially out of looking for a funeral and a church that might be able to handle that that led you to this church, I think. Am I, am I getting that part of the story correct?

Yeah, she had been volunteering even in her disability, had been volunteering as a to help with the homeless ministry that they had there every morning. They, they had a program called the GAP program that was— all of the homeless shelters closed at 7, and the walk-in centers didn't open until 10. And so in Massachusetts, it's wicked cold between 7 and 10 in the middle of the winter. So they had this GAP program that was open during that gap, and you could go and play games and have breakfast or whatever. And she would serve and cook breakfast for people. Um, and so I knew of this church because of it, and I called. Um, I'll never forget, like, sitting on a ledge, um, in the burn unit at Boston General, calling this church and saying, hey, my wife is going to die in the next couple of days, like, I need a place to hold the funeral, can you do it? And expecting to be rejected. But at 35 years old, you know, I hadn't thought about, well, funeral homes have funeral directors that can do all this stuff. Like, all I had known was growing up Southern Baptist, and you go to a church and that's where you have, um, that's where you have a funeral. And, and the pastor didn't say, you know, let me talk to my elders, or let me think about what my, what my top donors are going to say. He simply said, we'd be honored to. And they did. And, um, the whole sermon, the whole service actually, he, he talked about me as a widow and me as somebody who, who desperately needed to be loved and to be surrounded. And this church community just enveloped me, um, in a way that I had never known. I just moved to this town, like, like you had explained. I had been on tour for many years. I'd gotten off to her because Sue could no longer take care of herself. And so my whole year in North— Sue lived in Northampton for about 2 and a half years. My whole year in Northampton up to that point had just been taking care of Sue. So I knew no one. And so these people just came around me and just showed me Jesus and were what the family of God is really supposed to be.

And I get the feeling that this church was not the most affirming church, uh, either, necessarily. Um, no.

And it's the irony of it is Northampton, Massachusetts is per capita the largest number of lesbians anywhere in the world. Like, this is not like a just a— like, if you look it up online, it is per capita. Go to Wikipedia, it's there. It's Northampton, Massachusetts. I happen to go to the singular, the one non-affirming church in all of Northampton is where Sue had decided to volunteer. But like I said, I was just loved as a human being. And because of that, I was able to look at so many other wounds and so many other things that were happening in my life. And was finally able to say, okay, this is what I want to do with my sexuality, and this is what I want to do with my gender identity. Um, this is what I feel like God is saying to me.

Wow. So I think it's important— and I apologize again that I interrupted you in the midst of your story— but I feel like it's important for many of my listeners who probably belong to churches that would probably consider themselves not affirming to homosexuals and, and anybody in the LGBT+ community. Um, it's important to hear that part of the story for churches who may find themselves in that state. You can still love people, you can still be Jesus to people, uh, and without being, um, unmercifully judgmental, I guess I would say. And, you know, you travel a lot with Bill, and you work with, with Bill Henson. And he said something at that conference that I have held on to and cannot get it in my mind. It almost haunts me. And he says, the gospel of exclusion has no power to reach those who have already been banished. And, and I feel like this is a story of where a church decided, we don't necessarily want to change where we've been, but we want to love like Jesus as much as we can. And I think that's a powerful part of your story. It's all— it almost shows a sense of humor on God's part that you said there, I picked— you know, your wife had picked the one church that was not affirming to, to volunteer at. And yet the way that, that I think this is a beautiful part of grace being lived out is the way that this community took you in, loved you, was really a part of God getting a hold of you, you know, and, and helping you, uh, to seek the Lord in a way. So anyway, I got off— I got you off track of your story, but it was with a purpose because I wanted those of us listening to make sure we made that connection there. So, um, if you want to continue where, where you had left off, or, or we can go on somewhere else, but I'd love to hear more of your story and, and how God has continually been working through it.

Sure. So I'm ADD, so when we get off track, it takes me a second. Where the squirrel went.

My apologies. I'm so sorry.

It's absolutely fine. It just takes me a second to get back to where, uh, to where I was. But, but the main thing was that he realized— this pastor, um, got to know me as a person. He had me into his home. He, he, um, he and I actually became really good friends. Um, we both loved sports. My favorite, uh, college football team is Notre Dame. His is, uh, USC. And they're, you know, they're huge rivals. And so at the end of, at the end of every season, they would play each other. And so we would have like a big thing that like the two of us would get together and would usually watch Notre Dame trample USC, which made me very happy. But he just got to know me as a human being. And because of that, I was able to face so many other things. But, you know, something— two things. If I go squirrel moment, remind me that I want to come back to an LGBT person coming into your church.

Okay.

You said the word homosexual earlier. That is one of the surest ways to make an LGBT person stop listening to you. There are certain words that you just, you don't want to say. A, because it was, um, it was used as a clinical diagnosis for so long for mental illness. Um, but also in today's culture, it's used specifically as, um, as an action. So like, someone who, who's homosexual is obviously going out and having lots of gay sex, or someone who is gay is obviously going out and having lots of gay sex. When I tell you that I'm gay, all that I'm doing is telling you that I have girl parts and I like people with girl parts. That's really all I'm saying. Um, and so you want to be asking honoring questions beyond that. You know, if somebody does come out to you as being, you know, non-binary or gay— I have a young person that I'm working with who's a natal female, identifies as male, but says that they're gay because they're attracted to men. Which would be exactly opposite why I would say I'm gay. So it's even within the community, you have to ask these honoring questions, right? Um, so, so that, that's just kind of one of those words that you, that you want to steer away from. You know, if you wanted to talk about, um, homosexuality in the Bible, not something that I would recommend but isn't quite as offensive. Is saying, oh, you're a homosexual, I hear that and I hear automatically, oh, that person's a bigot, they're going to hate me, they judge me, they think I'm going to hell.

Wow.

Now I know you well enough at this point to know that that's not at all what you meant, um, but that's what an LGBT person is going to hear. Um, going back to somebody, uh, coming into, coming into a church.

Yes.

If, if an LGBT couple comes into your church it's super easy to think that that's the first thing that you need to fix.

Mm.

And that I can't let them have members. And granted, a lot of this is going to have to do with, with denomination. You know, there are non-denominational churches that can say, yeah, you can be a member. Yeah, we can baptize you. Yeah, we can do this. Because there's not hundreds of years of tradition or oversight boards or whatever that are saying that no, you can't. We do recognize that there are places and, and there are churches that have, that have oversight boards and things outside of a local church that say no, you absolutely cannot do that. Um, but think about any sin in our life. We're constantly working towards sanctification. Now I'm assuming that because you were at this conference that you're part of the Wesleyan Holiness movement.

Yes.

Um, I'm not, so, so let's just start out by saying that I think that it's awesome to think that we can be fully sanctified in this lifetime. It's just not something that I personally believe.

Understood.

So that's just kind of a theological difference that we're going to have there. Um, but within that path, we can agree that we have to go by God's timing. Not by our timing. And there may be times that— or there may be things that we simply don't get worked out in this lifetime, as hard as we try. And so when we, when we create programs or we create doctrine that specifically excludes people— and I'm not saying that you shouldn't have, like, teaching authority should be given to anybody in the church. I'm not trying to say that at all, but that we need to find as many ways to say yes as possible so that people can, can feel as included and as, as much a part of Body of Christ as they can.

Yeah, that's good. And so first of all, thank you for helping me, uh, with, with the, the words I use too, because I still am learning and trying as best as I can to come around. And I think it's an important thing for all of us listening to hear that. Because if I hadn't made my flub, they probably wouldn't know that they're making it too. And I remember that being part of the conference. And so I'm still learning. So thanks for your patience with me as I continue to grow. But all of this that you're saying is so good. And I want to actually push back just a little bit on the Wesleyan thing too, because this is actually an argument we're having together because we have come to actually see that, that there are things that we are still growing with. And there are a lot of us Wesleyans that are more progressive sanctification people that are, that are feeling like that we're coming closer. And there's, like any other thing, there's a lot of camps. Some will say, nope, it's instantaneous, you're done, you know. And I think that's anathema to scripture and to the gospel, actually, because I do feel like we are on this journey. And there are times when We, we are continually growing, and I have friends that have had alcohol, for instance. Their temptation has been taken away immediately. I have other friends who are Christians, and they just cannot shake it, you know, and, and they're still part of the same thing. So, so that's another insight, I think, in all of our denominational wondering. One thing that they're teaching me at Loyola right now, where I'm studying is in a— it's a Catholic university. Um, they have been so wonderful about reminding me that all of these theologies and things we have, these were all worked out by somebody, and we're just assuming they were right. But, you know, we're, we're still working on it, you know. So I love that we can have these kind of conversations because everything we're talking about today are things that we have to come at with a lot of humility, and we have to come with it and say Jesus, help, you know, Jesus, help us as we work this out together and help us to love each other well and find ways to do this. Um, I'm hearing so much good from your story and with, with all your, uh, all your squirrelness and everything else, you know, uh, chasing things around. Um, I just, I love your, your heart and I love the ministry that you share. Um, my screen is telling me we have about just under 7 minutes left, so I know we're We're pushing it close a little bit, but I wonder if you could tell us a bit of the work that you are doing with people like Bill Henson and Posture Shift and things like that, because I don't think a lot of our people who are listening now maybe have ever even heard of that before. This may be a new concept to them, and I wonder if you might be able to share a little bit about Posture Shift and kind of some of your work there.

Sure. So if Bill hears this, he's going to be super impressed that I can do it this fast.

All right.

So we have 3 main, um, 3 main, um, not pillars, but 3 main sections, I guess. There's Posture Shift. Um, we only train top-down, meaning that when— we will not go into a church and teach a Sunday school class or something. Um, we train executive pastors, we train lead pastors, we train elders. We want to train people how to love their church better so that the message trickles down. We're not— we recognize the authority of the local church, and we don't want to be divisive. So, so that's the posture shift portion of it. We teach history, culture, and language. We do it missiologically. So just like you would if you were going to Cambodia, you would learn about their history, you would learn about their culture, you would learn about their language, and then you would, then you would go and missiologically share Christ. Well, we're saying let's do that within our churches. We're not saying let's go out to gay bars and do that. We need to make our churches safe long before we worry about proselytizing. So that's the Posture Shift portion of it, is making our churches safe. Um, then we have Guiding Families, which is basically the same thing except it's for families. It's making our families safe. Um, we have a Guiding Families book, we have a Guiding Families private, um, a Facebook group where parents can come in and share problems that they're going through on a daily basis. We have quarterly Zoom meetings. We actually have one coming up next, uh, next week, um, where we divide parents into LGB, T, or crisis. And you can go into either one of those groups. And the majority of the time, like, we'll give you a prompt and we send you out, um, to do the talking. So the majority of it is parents helping parents. Parents. We do have moderators in there to make sure that there's— that it's healthy. But for the most part, that's, that's the Guiding Families portion of it. And we are working on a new, a new version of Guiding Families that we're super excited about. And then we have our Justice Initiative. So if kids are kicked out of their home and lose college funding, we've paid for food and we paid for room and board If we've contacted colleges and say, hey, if you can take care of this kid's tuition, we'll take care of their room and board, things of that nature. Our four mission goals are to increase inclusivity within the church, understanding not everything can be a yes, but we want to find as many yeses as we can to reduce bullying, to reduce victimization, to reduce family rejection. And once those three things have been done, then we can look at nourishing faith identity. It's kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You have to make someone safe before you can start talking about them flourishing spiritually. Um, I see that we only have three minutes left, and I just really quickly want to get to my pronouns and why I use them.

Sure.

Um, and then, then I'll let you wrap it up. I promise I'll do this in under a minute. Um, before me, if I were to do what I wanted to do, what Leslie wanted to do, there's a different name I would go by. I would transition. I would be a male at this point. Um, I don't feel like that's what God is telling me personally to do. I'm not making that a prescriptive answer. That's what— that's not what God's telling me to do. Um, when I hear she/her from people who— especially people who know my pronouns— it makes me want to self- harm to the point of suicide, cutting, very unhealthy things. So me using they/them and identifying as non-binary is me following Christ to the best of my ability, although it's imperfect, while keeping myself mentally safe. I did want to get that in there because I know that people hear they/them and they think, oh, this is a big culture war thing, and it's not. It's a following Jesus to the best of my ability thing.

Yeah, I so appreciate you sharing that, and, and this is wonderful. I'm sorry that our time is cutting short a little bit because I feel like there is so much more to your story, but I do want people to dive in and learn a little bit more too, and, and some of that requires research on their end as well. Um, I'll tell you this, you were a part of one of my favorite moments of that conference that we did. When we sang, uh, one evening I had the, the honor of leading Is He Worthy, and I think we sang It Is Well with My Soul too, or something like that. And I always have a unique perspective when I'm leading worship because I get to see what everybody else doesn't get to see. And at least if we're in a traditional, like, church venue where, you know, I— the person up front is looking at everybody out there, I prefer where we're kind of in a circle so we can all see each other. But my perspective on that evening was to get to see you worship. And, and it wasn't just you, it was— we just had a special moment that night. But you specifically, because of where I was and I could see you, um, it was a powerful moment for me. It's a moment that I remember, and I can see when God is doing things so often in the midst of people's hearts while we're singing and while we're worshiping. And I, I And for whatever reason, being able to see you in that moment as we got to lead reminded me this is why I do what I do, because God has graced me to help people worship. And, and to just see the way that that was reflected, I felt like we were touching heaven together, all of us in that room that night. You were a big part of that, so I really appreciate it. And I, in, in the, the less than a minute that we have I'm just so grateful for, um, the way that you have been a person in my life to teach me and to help me learn and grow as a Christian. Even to make— even in our uncomfortableness, it's so good to wrestle with these things together. So we need to do a follow-up in the future to have you back and do some more.

Absolutely, that would be great.

But for right now, before we run out, I'm going to say to you what I say to all my guests and say, Leslie, Thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

Thanks so much for having me. And if you want to hear more about Posture Shift, go to postureshift.com.

Thank you for joining me here this week on Voices in My Head. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com where you can find out more about me, get my music on vinyl and CD, follow my blog, and even schedule me for a concert or a speaking engagement. Better yet, even a book signing in your neighborhood. You can find all that and more at rickleejames.com. Also, it would mean a great deal to me if you could write a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast will be online. And now for the benediction: May the God of hope fill you with all all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. God bless you, and thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.