Voices In My Head Podcast Episode 322: Eli Williams - Author of Father Love

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. And 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.

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That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Give it a try today! This episode of Voices in My Head is brought to you by Podbean. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. Visit podbean.com/voices to find out more. That's podbean.com/voices. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James. I'm very glad you can be with us here for a very special Father's Day edition of the Voices in My Head podcast. My guest today is sitting right here with me in the room. His name is Eli Williams. I'm going to tell you a bit about him, and then we're going to talk about his ministry and his book Father Love, and it's going to be an excellent conversation today. So this is all about Eli Williams. Eli is a husband, father, grandfather, and an ordained minister. He is president and co-founder of Urban Light Ministries, which can be found at www.urbanlight.org. Urban Light Ministries provides a weekly afterschool program that serves nearly 800 children. Urban Light Ministries operates a growing fatherhood program that annually impacts over 500 dads and their kids His passion for fatherhood is rooted in his upbringing and is stoked by his personal work with fathers, many of whom, for a wide variety of reasons, endure heartache and face tremendous barriers to full participation in raising of their children. Eli penned Father Love in the hope that it would encourage and inspire fathers to make every effort to be a big part of their children's lives. He challenges dads to move from good to great as protectors, Order Keepers, Providers, and Stabilizers. Reverend Eli Williams, welcome to the Voices in My Head podcast.

Thank you, Rick Lee James. It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, I am so looking forward to having this conversation today. I just finished your book, Father Love, and I think there's a lot of important material in there that needs to be covered. So we're going to take some time and talk about a few of the points from your book today. But the main goal is I hope people will read this, and especially fathers, because there's a real problem, as you know and as you write about so eloquently, with fathers not being there. And we really need strong fathers and people who will father children. And sometimes maybe that even comes from people who are not actual fathers, but who will be able to kind of stand there as that father figure in their lives. So I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing. But since 1993, we'll just start here, your nonprofit organization, your ministry, Urban Light Ministries. It's led a weekly ministry to all these school children, as we just talked about this morning. And you've listened to— you talk about in your book— horror stories of children in the program who were abused and neglected and traumatized. And you learned that in each case there was a missing father or father figure in each of those stories. Can you tell us a little bit about that and kind of how you came to that conclusion?

Yeah, I really did not know for the longest time just what it was that was causing so much trauma in these kids' lives. And of course, any schoolteacher will tell you that they see it in the classroom, in the school setting. These kids come to school with all of these issues and do not do well in school, so many of them, because of it. So I really didn't know for years what was behind all of that. Until I started doing some sniffing around about what is happening in our community as it relates to programs and services available for children who are growing up in a home without a present, involved, healthy, nurturing father. And so, in sitting in some of these community meetings where social workers and folks who work with families gather and talk about the issues they're dealing with, as they shared their stories about the work that they do with families and children, it became clear to me as I asked questions, when folks are talking about kids who have been misused or neglected, abandoned, having all kinds of problems, and the answer to my question, what is behind all of it, was always, well, there is no father who is there as that child's protector, who's loving and healthy and being a provider and helping that child to grow up in a nurturing environment. And so the more questions I asked, the clearer it became that this is one of the biggest problems that we face in any community. And it's not even only a local issue. It's, it's is a worldwide crisis of fatherlessness. It's important to note that sometimes the father is actually physically present.

Mm.

But often that father, in these cases, is neglectful. He's not prioritizing involvement with his child on every level. So it's possible to be physically present but not emotionally present. Not engaged.

Yeah.

And it has— the children have some of the same issues. He is almost as though he's not there at all. We also found that whatever the reason the father is absent, perhaps physically absent, it's not always because of divorce or alcoholism or drug abuse or any of these other things. Things like military deployment.

Mm-hmm.

Imprisonment.

Whatever the reason the father is not there on a daily basis sharing with the mother in the raising of the child, the child has trauma. The child has a hunger. The child has a certain hurt and a certain sense of being abandoned.

Mm-hmm.

Whatever the reason the father is not there. So that helps to paint the whole picture that it's not always because he's just a bad man. Sometimes it's just because he cannot be there physically.

Yeah.

Well, and that's an excellent point you raised about military fathers that get deployed, and maybe by no choice of their own, and maybe really want to be there, and different ones that are in prison. And so I want to talk about that a little bit more later on if we have a chance, maybe some ideas for how fathers who want to be present but can't might be able to find a way to be there. But hopefully we'll have time for that in this conversation as we talk. One thing that I enjoyed reading about was you talked about your own father in the book and the good example that he was for you. Because this is a special Father's Day episode, can you share a little bit about your own dad and some of the the good things that he instilled in you and just by the fact that he was there?

Well, thanks for asking. I never get tired of talking about our dad. My father, when he was a youngster, experienced the trauma of having his dad walk away from him and his siblings and his mother. And I remember hearing the story about my dad's sister running down the road, you know, crying, you know, "Dad, come back." He left and started a new family. We found out years later he started a new family in another part of Alabama. And my father, experiencing that, decided in his heart that he would never be the kind of man who would walk out on his family. So having made that commitment as a teenager, he followed through with it. He was serious about his, his commitment to the Lord, so he was involved with church, and there he found men who were good examples of what a father should be. And so his engagement the church lasted a lifetime. He became a junior deacon while still a young man. And when he died about 20 years ago, he died having been the senior deacon at a local church in Dayton, Ohio. He and my mother were together for life. They married young and their commitment was to love each other and to have kids and raise them up in the right way. And my mom and dad raised 13 children.

Wow.

All biological children together between the two of them.

And any, any twins in there?

No twins.

Wow.

So 13 different types. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mostly, mostly 2 years apart.

Wow.

And I say mostly. And we, we grew up, you know, not having a lot, but having everything we needed. Sure. On a high school common laborer's wage. Of course, to be honest about it, my father worked more than one job. He did as much as he had to do to make sure he provided for his family. We respect him for that. So we didn't always have the newest of everything, but we had everything we needed. Most of all, we had the love and the security that comes with having a mother and a father committed to you, there as your provider and protector and order keeper and stabilizer. And it helped us grow up, all of us siblings grow up to turn out to be, you know, pretty good folks. I was probably the wildest of the bunch.

Yeah. Well, I'm curious as you're talking, how many bedrooms in the house you grew up in with that many children. And where do you— where are you in the, in the order of children? Are you middle or oldest?

I'm the 7th out of 9 sons. Okay.

All right.

And I am the 9th child overall.

Okay.

Wow.

Yeah. So fortunately we all weren't there at the same time.

At the same time. Okay.

So, you know, we didn't need a mansion.

Yeah.

But We did have to share beds.

Sure.

Which, I mean, it was normal for us. Yeah. So we didn't see anything unusual.

You grew up that way. Sure.

So, and we always had, you know, clothes to wear. We never had to wear shoes with holes in them because Dad was an excellent provider. And we always knew of God because my parents made sure that we went to church. Church from Sunday school on up throughout the day on Sunday and lived as witnesses of what a mature and responsible mother and a father should be and how they should live their lives. So we're very, very grateful for that. Yeah. Now, that having been said, he wasn't perfect, as nobody is.

Nobody is.

There are certain things he just did not know or just did not have time for. When you have a full-time job plus side jobs, and you're committed to the church, and you've got a big family, you don't have time for one-on-ones with all of your kids. And so not really understanding the crucial importance of that, my dad did not— he was not able to stretch himself to be able to spend quality time one-on-one with with each of us.

Sure.

And so I grew up without really having a, a very close relationship with my father. It was always respectful, you know, it's always— he was always honored, um, sure, both in theory and in practice, uh, and in my heart. And he was always loving and a good dad, but having those times where I could have him all to myself was not generally possible.

Not very often.

I did not know the importance of that until I was in my 50s. We actually had started our fatherhood program, and I attended one of our early sessions with Raymond Lloyd, who, you know, was very helpful in getting this started. And he went through an exercise in which all the men in the class were asked to do some introspection about the way they were raised and what they wish they had heard or what they wish they had experienced from their fathers. It was only then that I was hit between the eyes pretty much with what I had missed by not having that close personal one-on-one relationship with him. It hurt. It hurt. And I really then began— my passion for this work really went to another level at that point because I realized that as good of a father as I had, not having had that personal, very close one-on-one relationship with him hurt so much. I can imagine what it would be like not knowing who your father is or having a dad who's not there, or having a dad who's there but is not—

is not present—

much of a father when it comes to being emotionally connected to you.

He's there but not there.

Yeah. So that, as I said, that really— that caused me to become even more committed to this work because my empathy for the dads we work with is at a different level now.

Yeah.

Having come to grips with my own feelings of father hunger.

Yeah, well, and I love the way that in your book you talk about God the Father and his love. And I mean, really, your book, the title Father Love, is pointing us to the Heavenly Father and the love that we see. And specifically, a large bit of your book deals with 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, the love chapter, and the different aspects of love, and really the different aspects of the way that God the Father shows us his love and the way that we are called as fathers to live this out. And again, I want to emphasize this to those who may be listening who may not be fathers, and again, that may not even be by your choice, sometimes you just aren't able to be. But there are, there's a lot of need for people to father other people, like there's mentor programs, there's things like you work with, and there is that longing there. And we see a lot of this, and you write about a lot of this throughout the 1 Corinthians 13. So I kind of want to mention some of these different 16 characters characteristics that we see in 1 Corinthians 13 that you write about. I love the way that you talk about love is patience on steroids. It's what you say in the book. And because, you know, love is patient, love is kind, and the different ones that we go through. Talk to us a little bit about the importance of patience and how you say that love is patience on steroids. Because I specifically see the need of that just when I go to someplace like the grocery store. It seems like I see a lot of younger parents, sometimes it's fathers, sometimes it's mothers, maybe it's both. I see them just immediately flying off the handle at their children and it seems like things that are just normal kid things, so often I just see them lose control, lose temper long-suffering. Maybe just talk a little bit, if you could, about this need for patience and how that really does show the love of the Father.

Yeah, there's a reason I think that patience is the first on the list.

Yeah, definitely.

I like the King James word long-suffering. Yeah, because it gets to what is meant by this word patience. I mean, today we can think of patience as the ability to wait for your microwave popcorn to pop.

You know what I mean? Right, yeah. And even that seems like eternity.

Exactly. But long-suffering is the ability to be patient over a long period of time under difficult circumstances without complaining. And there's the kicker.

Yeah.

Suffering over a long period of time under difficult circumstances. Now, whether that be with, with, with, with a child or with a spouse, excuse me, or with a career or with an illness, whatever, whatever the need is, being able to endure it for a significant period of time without complaining. That's important because once you start complaining, you can't say you're patient anymore. So the not complaining part is important. But when it comes to children, children need a father and a mother who is able to put up with to endure whatever their childhood issues are. And this can extend right on into adulthood.

Yeah, it's true.

Being willing to, to love them and to, to be there for them and to be understanding while they grow, while they develop, while they improve. Whether it comes— whether we're talking about You know, potty training.

Yeah. Oh my. It wasn't that long ago with my son. So I remember.

Yeah, exactly. You know, this has become such an issue today. I suppose it always has been. But so much of the child abuse is because one parent or the other or both lacks patience for a child, even, even a very young child that cries a lot. Yeah, you've heard the stories about kids who were slammed against a wall.

Yeah, sometimes infants.

Yeah, even infants, because the child was crying. Yeah, a total lack of patience of any kind. This is so important for parents to develop. Yeah, now it's a fruit of the Spirit, so it is best developed in a person, or should be a person who is a believer and who has the Spirit of God in them, because it is the Holy Spirit that helps a person develop and become, you know, a model of what love looks like. And patience is one of those characteristics that demonstrates that a person has love. So we talk a lot about patience because because today more than ever, I think it's important for young parents especially to understand that babies are going to cry. Babies, you know, toddlers are going to get into stuff. You know, they are going to talk too much. They are going to spill things. Love enables us to be patient with them for as long as it takes without complaining. Uh, so that that child can get the full benefit of, of the love of the parent. That's why we subtitled the book The Powerful Resource Every Child Needs, because love is a resource.

Yeah.

And a father's love is like no other resource. And the biological father of a child brings that child something that no one else can. Your point about others coming alongside children who may be fatherless— yes, very important, highly valued, and whenever possible we should embrace children who may not be our own. Sure. But there's something about the unique nature of a biological father's love for his child that the child craves. That that child needs and will always need. We see so many grown-ups who perhaps were raised by a stepfather or a foster parent or an adoptive father and have otherwise, you know, had a great experience with that, but still there is this place deep within their heart that longs for a relationship with that biological father.

Yeah.

And the same is true with, with mothers. So we always want to acknowledge that and encourage biological fathers, whatever the situation, whether there's been a divorce or there was a never married situation, or you had a child as a result of a one-night stand, do everything you can to be involved in that child's life because that child needs you. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think you're exactly right. You know, to brag on my own father just a little bit, my dad also wrote a book about this 1 Corinthians 13 passages and the flavors of love is what he calls it throughout the book. It's interesting to see those different things. And I know that my own father— not to tell stories without him being here— but he experienced having a dad who was there but who was not there emotionally and was abusive emotionally and did a lot of, I would say, emotional damage over the years that my dad has had to overcome a lot of. And so we see different aspects of things we need, and I love what you said a few moments ago when you said these are, you know, that patience is a fruit of the Spirit, and it's best seen in our lives and best lived in our lives when the Holy Spirit lives through us and when we allow ourselves to be carried along by the Spirit to help develop these things. One thing that I don't think my own dad got a lot of, which I did thankfully because my dad saw I needed it, was the second thing you write about, kindness. And we just can't underestimate kindness. It's the Greek word, well actually I think it's originally in Hebrew, the chesed. Michael Card just wrote a book on that one word. The entire book. I forget how many of something like 60 different meanings that this word can have, and it's the defining characteristic of God, this, the kindness of the Lord that leads us to repentance. And that's when you're talking about the 1 Corinthians 13 passage, you start talking about kindheartedness and something that we so much need. And I think it goes right along with patience, and it's also one of the fruit of the Spirit. And I'd love for you to just I'd like for you just to talk a little bit about that too, because just in the short time that I've been getting to know you, and this is really our second sit-down face-to-face to have a conversation, I sense the kindness of the Lord in your presence, you know, and that's, I think, something that the Holy Spirit begins to live out in us. But talk just a little bit too about the importance of kindness being part of that father relationship.

Yeah, you know, that's a whole session.

Yeah, I'll sit on that.

Men for so, for so many years, generations really, males have been given this notion that as the breadwinners and as the protectors, you know what I mean? Of our families, of our kids. You know, the important thing is you just to make sure that your family has what they need. And too often men have kind of an unkindness, a rough edge to them when it comes to how they interact with their children. And honestly, sometimes even with how they interact with their spouses.

I mean, wait till your father gets home. I mean, yeah, exactly right. We're not always known for being kind. So go ahead.

Exactly. And kindness is almost seen, you know, in kind of an unspoken way as a feminine characteristic. I've seen so many, so many fathers, and I'm sure I've been guilty of it at times myself, who will have that, that rough edge, that meanness to them when it comes to their children, especially their boys. So that needs to be tempered with kindness, which comes again from the Holy Spirit. It's developed in us by the Holy Spirit. Children have tender feelings, and they need tenderness that comes from their father. Male nurturance. We talk about male nurturance in the book, and kindness is one of those nurturing practices that children need to grow up healthy emotionally and to know that the person who has power over me is kind to me.

Yeah.

You know, and of course, of course, God The Father is the ultimate example of kindness. He's kind to us even when we don't deserve it. You know, we call it grace, you know, and he withholds punishment even when we deserve it.

Yeah.

You know, which we call mercy. And so that— those are the kinds— that is the kind of attitude that children crave from their father. And too many don't receive it. And I think it's because there really hasn't been the kind of teaching, the kind of training that males need as they grow and they develop, and the kind of modeling that they need to see what male kindness looks like when it comes to their relationship style, their communication style, their willingness to be, you know, with their children in a healthy way, touchy-feely.

Yeah.

You know, the hugs. Yeah. You know, and the kind words that children need to grow up healthy. Kids may not know they need it, but they, but they need it. Yeah. And as they grow and get older, not having had kindness from their fathers is a part of what drives father hungry, hunger. And sometimes Guys crave it so much that they will lean toward any male. We talk about how little girls grow up, um, without a loving and nurturing present father. And so at a very young age, they're craving that from a male and they will grasp for it, you know, even at a young age. And so many of them much too early become sexually involved with some guy who showed some kindness, who showed some tenderness. Well, they needed it from their dads, and when they didn't get it from dad, that hunger drove them to get it from whatever source they could find. And so older guys often prey on younger girls when they sense that they are needy for that kind of love and nurturing care, the kind of kindness that really is designed to come from the father. Yeah, I can probably go on and on.

Oh no, and that's fine. It's like I said, we could do a whole show just on this one topic, but I do feel like there's a real need for those things. And unfortunately, we're already almost at our half-hour mark, and there's so much more to talk about in the book. But I want to say a couple things and just kind of highlight a couple things throughout. Patience and kindness, the first two that you wrote about in that section, those, those are some of the just most important things that I see lacking. And, you know, I said the other day, my wife and I, we were with our son and we were at like a dollar store or something one day. And it's not just the fathers, it's the mothers. And this whole idea of patience and kindness, I think they go together. And. And they really do have to be cultivated, I think, because I don't know that we're patient by nature. We may not even be kind by nature. You know, I think it has to be cultivated. And the one thing that comes to my mind when I think about this and the importance for kids, in this store, this mother was just cussing her kids out and insulting them and just being so rude. And I could see in her she was at her wit's end for one thing. She didn't— she probably didn't even understand what she was doing to them and how she was saying it. And she probably was raised that way too. But my wife and I— my wife is a teacher and of course I'm kind of sensitive to it when I see that happen. I could see what it was doing to the kids as they're taking the brunt of it just in the store aisles. And yes, it can be frustrating. You have kids, sometimes they're unruly, and it's hard. I don't have any idea what their situation was, but it did break my heart a bit in those moments because I thought, maybe this lady has herself not experienced much kindness in her life, and she's sharing that unkindness with her children, and maybe they all are desperately needing it. And so I think we see it not just in fathers, We see it in mothers. We see it in all sorts of things. And again, it comes back to we desperately need the Holy Spirit to come and do some working in our lives and how we model that. With that being said, you talk about a lot of things. You go through the whole 1 Corinthians 13, all 16 different things, which we're not going to have time for today. But one thing I wanted to talk about, and you don't talk about it a lot in the book, but you do just a a little bit, and I wanted to get back to it. So everybody, please read the book for one thing, because we're just not going to have time to cover everything. But I wonder if through the years— we had talked about earlier people who are in the military, who maybe by no choice of their own, they have to be gone for 6 to 9 months, sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes people are in jail and can't be there for their kids. There might be a number of situations that take fathers away from their children. I wonder, do you have any suggestions for people in the way that they can still try to be present when they can't be present in the lives of their children? Just what are some of your suggestions for people like that? And it may not even be that. It may be it's a divorce situation. Maybe they have the kids on the weekend, but they can't be with them throughout the week, you know, just by the way that their visitation is set up. Maybe they're longing to to be there. I just wonder what some of your suggestions might be for those real-life situations that do happen.

Yeah, it comes down to doing all you can to be as present as you can every time you can. For, let's say, a father who is deployed or in prison, letters and phone calls. I mean, extremely important. It makes a world of difference to a child, and not just a little child either, a teenager, a young adult. It makes a world of difference to them to hear from their dad, or their mom for that matter, on a regular basis. You know, if it can't be daily, you know, at least weekly. A letter, a phone call, just to say, look, you You know, I'm sorry I can't be there, but I wanted you to know I'm thinking about you. You know, I love you and can't wait to see you. That means the world to a child who is probably feeling abandoned.

Yeah.

You know, even when they know it can't be helped, if it can't be helped, there's still that longing, that yearning for that father's presence and that father's touch. So do all that you can as much as you can, whenever you can. And beyond that, you know, there's, there's more that, that you could have done. So that would be my advice. And today, with FaceTime and these other digital ways that you can be in touch, you know, use those things because they mean a lot. It means a lot for that that child to know that dad is doing everything he can to be in touch and to be there for me.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate that so much. There's several different parts of the book that I want people to check out. There's a concept of what you call POPS in the book. And the P— remind us real quick what the POPS stands for.

The first P is protector.

Protector.

We put that first as opposed to provider. So many times dad is thought of as a wallet.

Oh, okay.

As a money tree. Right. You know, but protector, protector, order keeper, provider, and stabilizer. We can go through all four.

Sure.

In fact, we have a program called POPS 101 in which we do go through all four of those as an introduction to principles of healthy fathering. So I don't know how much time you want to spend on that, but that's, that's the acronym.

Yeah, POPS.

So we try to help fathers to be the best POPS they can be.

Well, I think that's great, and I just wanted to highlight it because I do want people to read the book, and that's something that I thought was very interesting and very helpful. This might actually be— if you're listening to this and you maybe run a ministry, or you maybe run some sort of after-school school program. I really want to recommend this book to all of you who are listening because there's a lot of really good information. Eli has been working with children for a long time and he's learned a lot of things. You're kind of our local Mr. Rogers a little bit in some ways, you know, in the way, you know, Fred Rogers is a hero of mine. And I love the way that you close out the book. It's toward the end and you say this, and I'm just going to read it because I wrote it down. I dream of a day when every little boy has a hero at home to look up to. I see a hero who may not rap, slam dunk, run touchdowns, or hit home runs, but who is man enough to love his children with all his heart. You know, and I think that's such a good, a good goal for us. And I can tell that is your heart when you have written this book and the ministry that you've shared over the years. And I also want to highlight just before we're done, because You also are a radio host as well, and people may not realize it, but you're the host of the weekly gospel music countdown on the Hot Gospel 20, and people can find that online at hotgospel20.com. And all that in addition to, to being a pastor and working in the community and your travels and different places that you go to. We have a lot of music enthusiasts that listen to this show as well, so I wanted to make that plug for what you do.

Thank you.

But please, uh, we, we need to do like a follow-up podcast in the future. But make sure to go online and read more about Eli Williams. Better yet, go to Amazon or wherever you buy books and get a copy of Father Love because it's really worth your time. You can go to his ministry site. Once again, I just want to point to it, urbanlight.org. And I will make sure and put links to all the things that Eli has part of in our show notes. So you can go to voicesinmyheadpodcast.com and find out lots more information. And I'm sure they could even contact you through the website if they had any questions or ways that— do you get a chance from time to time to go different places and speak about the book or to do things for different fathers groups along the way?

I do. I enjoy speaking at churches. Of course you're international here with your podcast, but this coming Sunday we'll be at the First Baptist Church of London— Ohio, that is.

Ohio, right.

So we enjoy going to churches and speaking. I enjoy speaking at men's groups and fathers and kids. This Saturday we'll be at a local Christian bookstore. They'll be hosting me to speak to to some fathers and their sons for Father's Day.

Terrific.

So whenever I'm invited, I try to make time to be able to visit whatever groups would like to have me come. You can get more information about that on our website. I do have a book website, which is thefatherlovebook.com.

Great.

You can go there and find out how to get a hold of me if you were interested in having me come as a speaker for workshop or sermon or just whatever you need.

Well, and I recommend that, and try to bring him to your church whenever you can or whatever function you might have where you seem— you see that this is such an important topic and it's so relevant to our times, and Eli is a great resource, and I know he wants to be a great resource to as many people as you can. So thank you for your time, and as I tell my guests every week on this show, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head this week.

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 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 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.