025 Help Lyme Disease is robbing me blind!

From the creators of Lyme Voice and Disappearing from Society comes a brilliantly simple idea, but this time it comes as a book. Imagine a world in which birds can talk like people. You'll get a bird's-eye view of life with Lyme disease as one bird family must unite to overcome the obstacles of life with Lyme disease. Guaranteed to make you laugh and cry. Written in a way that helps you articulate the losses you are experiencing as a household while simultaneously empowering you to keep fighting. Little Bite, Big Trouble is available today at Amazon.com. Congratulations, Lyme Fighter!

Today you had the courage to open your eyes and face another day.

Welcome to Lyme Voice. This show's purpose is to help you put the puzzle pieces of Lyme into place. Each episode is designed to inspire, educate, and encourage you on your Lyme journey to wellness.

Together we will fight.

Together we will heal.

Together we will live.

Here are your hosts, Aaron and Sarah Sanchez.

Welcome everyone to Lion Voice. We are so glad you're here. I am so glad that you guys had the courage to face another day.

Today we're talking about money, money, money, money, money, because money really does matter. Money is one of the leading causes of divorce, and also chronic illness is one of the leading causes of divorce amongst couples. So We have a lot stacked against us.

Yeah, because when you get into it, being sick is expensive. Yeah, it costs a lot, a lot of money. And that if you're not blessed with lots of resources, this is gonna be a struggle because, I mean, that's Sarah and I's story. We just really struggled with their finances. I think you guys are really gonna enjoy this really important message. Hi guys, I want to tell you about Audible. I love Audible. Sarah loves Audible. I know you guys are gonna love it as well. It has been such a huge resource for us. We have an offer at lionvoice.com where you can actually get your first month free. This is a great way to grab one of those books that you've been meaning to read and be able to do it on the go, in your commute, while you're doing your chores, Or if you just don't have the strength to hold up the book that day, this is a great way to be able to utilize the information that is so vital for your health and recovery. Go to lionvoice.com, get your free Audible download, and help support Lion Voice. Thank you guys so much, we really appreciate it. If you like what we're doing here at Lion Voice, one thing you can do to help us is simply by going to iTunes, or Stitcher and leaving your review. This really helps get the message of LineVoice out to others. Don't forget to go to our Facebook page, LineVoice, and while you're there, give us your like. Also, go to LineVoice.com and you can find all sorts of information and past episodes, also some of Sarah's blog posts. Don't forget to share while you're there. Talk to you soon.

Welcome back, Lion Boys listeners. You are in for a real treat today as we have a returning guest with us in the studio, AKA the playroom. Put your hands together and welcome back my dad, Don Slickdee. Thanks for coming back to Thanks for coming back to us.

Yeah, I've enjoyed— Tricia and I enjoyed the, the other podcast we did with you guys. Yeah, really looking forward to this one today because it's in my passion zone, and so excited to, to do it with you.

Yeah, so my parents on episode 16, it was titled the Generational Lyme Effect, and they just talked about how my illness has affected our family, and we've talked about what a huge help and encouragement they've been to us and financially I could have never gone to treatment without your guys' help. And so today we're talking about finances. And so Dad, are you ready to help us put the puzzle pieces of finance into place?

Yes, I'm ready to get you going down a good pathway. I mean, it's, it's a complicated puzzle as anybody with Lyme knows and the financial stresses, and you and Aaron have walked it. And we've walked it with you, but at least I think I'm able to get you on a path where oftentimes the poor and the chronically ill have no path. And so that's, that's what I think I do.

Yeah, I'm really excited about this as well, just because it is part of LionVoice's history. I think if it wasn't for this class and for the things we've learned through G5T, I don't think that Lime Voice would exist now.

No.

And it—

I—

we're excited for you all to hear this because I really feel like this is going to make a real big impact and really start adjusting your, your attitude. And we talk about Fight, Heal, Live, fighting being a mindset, and this is part of that. This is a mindset in your finances if, uh, that has to be there. And we all know how hard it is Being sick is not cheap. It's very expensive in so many ways. So, you know, we're excited to just see and help you guys understand some of the things that really were holding us back from achieving health, achieving living.

Yeah, well, finances are one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people getting adequate treatment and We lived it for years. You know, when you're putting $500 a month in a chiropractic visits and things that are only giving you a fraction of relief, you kind of end up— you end up compromising your care because you can't afford to do what needs to be done. And so one of the books that Aaron and I have listened to many times on Audible is The 4-Hour Workweek. And one of the first times after we read it You said he's doing a 4-hour workweek because he wants to go out. Timothy Ferriss wants to go out and explore the world. We need a 4-hour workweek because we have huge responsibilities and we have wives and husbands who are sick and kids who are sick and we just need more time and money to attend to those needs.

Right. Yeah.

So Dad, we have talked about G5T in some of the previous episodes and Tell us, tell us your fight story in the sense of where G5T came from, what it is, and, and what really pushed you to get that online content out there.

Okay. Just to give you a little context, I was a bi-vocational pastor for 33 years, and of course Sarah grew up in our family. And bi-vocational means I pastored and I did other jobs. I had— I did some roofing, some house framing. Window cleaning business. I threw newspapers. I did what I needed to do to pay the bills, right? And my— we'll talk about blueprint later, but my blueprint was work hard for your money. That's an honorable thing to do. And so that's what I did, and we paid the bills, as Sarah knows. You know, we paid the bills and a little bit more, but not a lot. And so that's my background. I also come from an evangelical background, and my particular branch Didn't really worry about the future for us pastors and didn't really plan well, and that wasn't in my training in my youth. And so, when I turned 50, I kind of realized the writing was on the wall that Tricia and I were going to be in trouble if I didn't change it. So, in the early 2000s, about 2003, I started flipping houses with my home equity and made some money again, but my mentality was totally to get by and be responsible and pay the bills and maybe to purchased some rentals along the way for Trish and I. About 5 years ago, I read a book called Secrets of the Millionaire Mind from T. Harv Eker, and it totally revolutionized my life. Uh, we'll get into it later, but he talks about all of us have been programmed how we relate to money, how much money we make, how much hope we have in making more money. And see, I understood this from a pastor's perspective when I saw people in my congregation, they were the way they were because of things that happened to them in their youth with their parents and other experiences. And so they viewed life and God a certain way, and that showed up in their behavior, right? And I understood that connection between your upbringing and the way you were now. Well, when I read T. Harv's book, I realized, wow, it's the exact same principle that the way you were trained and programmed in your youth and your, your current peer group, really Well, that's why you are where you are financially. And for me, I just realized that I am where I am because of how I had been programmed and changed. I realized I had come upon a figurative or proverbial gold mine, a self-awareness that I didn't have financially. So I realized really quickly that the people I'm around, my network of friends, both in the church and out of the church didn't know what I was reading and studying. And I have the energy and the ability and the visionary type personality to want to pass it on. So 2 years ago I started G5 Training. And, uh, you know, that's where it came. It came from my own need. And then you and Aaron were a big part of it because I saw you guys were struggling in a mighty way. And, you know, I kind of drained my finances to help you guys. And so now I'm back to square one. What am I going to do? Even. And yet that book sent me over the top and gave me an awareness and an understanding. And I said, this is changing my life. I know it's going to radically change my life financially, and I want to help others. So I started G5T a couple of years ago.

Awesome. And it has— it's been profound. We will talk about it later on, but just the testimonies. And I think one of the things that it did for us was we just came to an understanding, you know, we had gone from being middle class, being able to afford an international adoption, you know, occasionally going on vacations and stuff, to then after so many years of being ill and just paying massive amounts of medical bills for years and years, we are no longer in the middle class realm. We're definitely in, in lower class in a lot of ways. And but one of the things we see is you can't have a blue-collar income in America. You cannot have a blue-collar income, a large family, and medical needs. It doesn't add up.

With one income.

With one income.

Ain't gonna happen.

Yeah, I mean, most households have two incomes because you need it.

And it barely adds up with two incomes. Right. Honestly, for most Americans today, it barely adds up with two incomes. And it pinches family time. And then if you add Lyme or any other chronic illness, your family's in a super tough spot.

What is the focus of G5 Training?

Okay, the focus of G5 Training is really hope. I mean, as I've developed the company, I really didn't see that right at the beginning because I, I thought I was going to help people just make more money, get right with money, have a good healthy relationship with money, and be able to make more money. But as I got into it, I realized that like yourselves, you didn't have hardly any hope as you were in the middle of your Lyme and your doctor bills and your treatment and all that stuff. And, and, and I realized in general a lot of Americans in the church, out of the church, don't have hope. So my— what I call my deliverables is hope, awareness, choice, options, and opportunities. And financially, what I've discovered is a lot of us Americans, whether you're in chronic illness or not, just non-ill families are struggling because our economy has changed radically. The jobs have fled our country that will really support a family well, and therefore a lot of Americans don't have hope. They're yielding, if you will, they're submitting to a standard of living that maybe they don't even necessarily like their work. And it's not meeting their needs adequately, and they don't know what to do, and they don't have a lot of hope about it. So, I realize really what I'm selling is hope, and you guys will share your story later, but it's not a fictitious hope. I think it's the real deal. We don't have hope because we don't see a pathway outside of education plus job equals security. And so, anyway, that's the focus. It is a greater self-awareness. It's greater financial intelligence. It's an emphasis on emotional intelligence. And those things are words that maybe you don't know what I mean when I say that. We'll maybe hit on it later, but during the course, you get those things, and it all yields hope and a potential pathway.

Yeah, and it does. It does do that. So, one of your taglines is helping people create a personal pathway to financial freedom. What— explain exactly what that entails.

Okay, along the way, I mean, I use a lot of other people's material. It's not my own. I use prominent authors and their books, and I highlight and magnify what they say, make it personal to you. But, uh, I define financial freedom— I came up with my own definition— as this: it's the ability to freely make, manage, multiply, and share money today while overcoming your fears and anxieties about tomorrow.. And so I made that one up, and some people may say, well, Don, it's— everybody's free to make money. And I will tell you, you are not. You don't know what you don't know. And most people are so programmed financially, they may be programmed to make a certain amount of dollars per year, and they don't realize they're probably never going to exceed that because of how they've been programmed, because of their financial blueprint. And that's part of the course, as you guys know, It's, you know, a greater self-awareness. It's a greater hope that you can break out of the income level you're in without working 100 hours a week. Okay. And so to me, that's financial freedom, is when you can freely make, manage, multiply. Most Americans, because of the way they've been trained and programmed by their families and our culture, are not literally free to do those 3 things. And then, of course, for many of us, and especially of you guys who have chronic illness and medical bills in your family, you don't even have money to share. Literally nothing almost to share, both emotionally and financially. So G5T— the word G, by the way, means gift. And an old King Solomon said, you know, life is messy and there's a lot of conundrums, and, and, you know, you're born naked, you die naked, and you make a bunch of money and somebody else gets it and wastes it, and what use is that? You know, he uses the words futility and meaninglessness. But in the middle of that, Solomon said this: If you can enjoy your life and your wife and your work and your possessions, indeed this is a gift of God. And so that's why I titled my company G5Ts, because life is a gift. But you know what? If you're not paying your bills and you have no hope, it's hard to enjoy your life, maybe even your wife. You guys know financial pressures are a big part of divorce in our country, and then chronic illness is a big part of divorce. So in the midst of the conundrums and the messiness and the futility that we all face, we need hope, but then we need some knowledge. We need somebody to cheer us and give us courage. We need somebody to tell us a pathway how to get out of where we're at. So really, that's what I do in G5T.

Yeah. Yeah. And it— without the class, this podcast would not exist. So you can all thank Don, because it did. It gave us hope in a pathway that we hadn't explored. Yeah. You talk about a financial blueprint. What is it, and is it really that important?

Okay, this is, you know, T. Harv Eker brought this out. I didn't make it up myself. He brought it up to me in a way that I understood it spiritually, emotionally in people's lives, that we have a programming but I didn't understand we have a financial programming. That's what a blueprint is, is that you've been programmed by the things you heard from your parents, you saw in them, and that you personally have experienced. Those 3 things determine your financial programming, which T. Harv Eker calls a financial blueprint. Okay, that's the book, and that's the concept that I realized personally for me, in my mid-50s, I had lived my exact blueprint. And it was sobering. It was even a little discouraging for me to see that, that I thought I was just doing the normal right thing. Okay, but then when I read his book, I realized, well, I've been doing the programmed thing, both the programming I received from my parents and my small-town Midwest lower-middle-class income family, which didn't value saving, investing, etc., and also my early-year evangelical Christian training, which emphasized manage your money well and give to the church, those things. I did all that stuff my whole life, and in my 50s I was in trouble. And then as my family started getting in trouble with health issues, I realized my blueprint was the problem. Wasn't the economy. It wasn't anything outside of myself. It was Don Slickdy had attitudes and core values concerning the topic of money, the earning of money, that were not healthy and supportive to really multiply my resources. So that's what a blueprint is. It's your pre-programmed response to making money. And Sarah, if I could just give one example along the way as I studied this, A friend of mine in town here, a businessman, happens to be a church man also, and I was talking to him about a blueprint, and he said this. He said, Don, I just want to make $100,000 a year. I don't want to be chasing money. I don't want to be greedy, and I don't want to feel guilty when I go to church. Literally swear on my Bible, that's exactly what he said. And I use it in my book, and I use it all the time because He spoke out his exact blueprint. So now I ask you in my audience, will he ever make more than $100,000 a year? No, the answer is absolutely not, because in his mind that's a, I think, a comfortable level for him. And it's also, if he goes greater than that, he's going to feel greedy and guilty when he goes to church. So you see how he has that blueprint and he spoke it in one sentence. So the importance of a blueprint is if you don't see that and you don't get that, you may have some natural core values and limited thinking, uh, around the topic of money and making money and multiplying money. You don't even— you're not even aware of it. You just think that's normal because you think what you think is normal because you're normal, right? But literally, you may not be normal at all. You may be limiting yourself radically.. And that's what I find— what I found with myself and my clients broadly in general discover the same thing. Now, I know some millionaires in town here, but I don't know them real well personally. But the one I do know, I asked him about this because he lost his million. And I asked him at dinner, do you think it was your blueprint? Well, he didn't know much about a blueprint. He said, no, it's not my blueprint. It's just circumstances, you know, deal gone bad here, we overspent there. Lost the million dollars, and literally it was more than a million, okay? I'm not exaggerating for effect. He took my course Financial Freedom Inside Out, and by week 4, he realized that it was totally his blueprint and had nothing to do with the circumstances of his life, that he actually lived out his circumstances by his blueprint. So how important is blueprint? Radically important and way more important than most of us are aware of.

I think for me, I realized through this class my blueprint was happening in my life as well, and it didn't apply, or the Lyme ingredient didn't jive with it.

We were fine until Lyme— fine-ish until Lyme took over, right?

And I think this is one of the things that really impacted me is if I'm going to get— and why a blueprint is so important. If I'm going to get out of this situation, I have to change the plan. And if you think of your blueprint as your plan for your life, that was exactly what was happening. I was following the plan except the lime ingredient just did not fit.

Yeah. If I could interject, Aaron, though, I know you have a lot more to say, Sarah, but I just want to interject that Okay, you guys got really desperate because of Lyme. Okay, you got really desperate. But I would propose to you, and I think you would agree, you were on an unhealthy financial path that was very limiting in regards to your potential. Lyme made you and, and Trish and I together desperate for answers. And, you know, I just say kind of by God's grace, I read that book and it helped me to see a new pathway and options and opportunities. But so what What I think happens out there is the chronically ill tend to get very desperate on many levels, emotional, financial, marriage, et cetera. I get it, I understand it. You guys live it all the time. So people that aren't a little bit desperate and needy, they're comfortable, and they will ignore what we're talking about because they're not motivated to really grow out of it. In other words, they may be paying their bills, they may be content, and nothing wrong with that, okay? Except that comfort tends to limit your potential. And that's another part of my audience. It is for the needy, the desperate, the motivated, but it's also for people who maybe have flatlined, even if you're paying your bills and doing okay, but you're flatlined and you're almost too comfortable and you want to excel and reach your potential, I can help.

Well, and what's so interesting, one of my blueprints was I knew how to earn money through a job. And, you know, and even in the entrepreneurial realm, you know, my brother Michael and I opened Absolute Real Estate, and I was doing real estate, he was doing custom furniture. And yet when we weren't free because of Lyme, when we weren't free physically to go to work, we did not know how to earn money in different— we didn't know how to multiply money, and we didn't know how to earn money in in a passive way at all. And so what is unfortunate is that really when you need the most finances, when your life is on the line, most people have the least.

And they don't know how to get out of that pattern.

And I mean, we have talked to so many people, financial planners, life coaches, pastors. We've talked over the years, so many people and nobody could point us in a direction. And G5T, I mean, we've talked about that you could have essentially created it specifically for us. Like, okay, you have to start thinking outside the box when your life doesn't fit into this little cookie cutter. And I think that was a huge transition for Aaron, is because as I was getting sicker and sicker and we have 5 kids at home, I needed him to come home because I physically could not get out of bed. And he would always come home and start making dinner, But as he needed to come home, for him it wasn't acceptable to come home because he needed to be at work for 40 hours a week. And especially when you have bills coming in, you do, you feel that you need to go and work, but that doesn't work for us anymore, right?

And Sarah, if I can interject, because it's so personal to us and our family, as you guys were going through that, immersed in not keeping ahead, and, you know, Trish is over helping clean X amount of hours a week, and Aaron's working hard, but, you know, his wage job is not cutting it. I just want to share with the audience, back then, my counsel back then would have been, work harder, Aaron, and are you giving to the church? Are you tithing? Okay, that was the limit of my financial expertise back then. I didn't say it to you guys because I knew it was worthless counsel. It wasn't wise. It wouldn't have met the need. Aaron couldn't work anymore. He couldn't even work the 40 hours he was working. So you guys built a shop in your backyard to try to alleviate that being away from the family. Plus, Trisha and I were going through our things. We didn't understand what was happening to you, you know. And again, it's that whole family, family dynamic of What's wrong with her? What's going on? We can't figure it out. Week in, week out, one week she's better, the next week she's horrible. Now she's almost dying. What is going on? And so my financial counsel, which I didn't say to you guys because inwardly I knew this is not going to work for these guys, and that's when reading T. Harv's book— and I feel bad about this now, you know, because I didn't have any more counsel except my My blueprint, my programming was work harder, work another job. I worked 2 or 3 jobs most of my life. Aaron wasn't there, he couldn't do it. Tithing wasn't going to make the difference. You needed other answers. You needed other awareness, wisdom, pathway that THARV and what I teach now in G5 training helps people at least see there's some alternative pathways.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting because we went through Dave Ramsey's Dave Ramsey's in the Christian realm, you know, basically financial planning and financial intelligence.

Yeah, get out of debt and good stuff, good stuff.

Good stuff, it's about managing your money. And we went through that and at one point he said, I don't remember the specific statistic, he said, you should not be paying more than 12% of your income towards health expenses. And I'm looking at this and our health expenses have far exceeded what our mortgage was, for years and years and years. Because we were self-employed, we had high premiums, we had high out-of-pocket, we paid a lot for medication, and I've been sick for over a decade. I remember thinking, as I'm reading this Dave Ramsey thing, I'm thinking, ah, you can't control that. When you are sick and you have to go into the ER, you can't be like, well, my budget doesn't allow for this this month.

You have to go in. Yeah, and I like Dave Ramsey's program. When I pastored, we had his program Financial Peace University into our church 3 or 4 times over the last decade, and I like it. But you know what? He's speaking to you, an audience that generally has enough money to start paying their debt off and snowball their debt and all these things. And there's not chaos in the family, there's normalcy. And if you follow his program, which is difficult program to follow, you can do it. But you guys, and many of the rest of us, we need hope and freedom to— from our blueprints, from our programming, which is unsupportive and unhealthy to, to wealth development. And we need freedom from those things to pursue our potential. And so anyway, that, you know, I like Dave Ramsey. But G5T deals more with the psychology of money, the internal— your internal relationship with money that I would say 90% of the population is pretty much wholly unaware of.

Hmm. Okay. You mentioned your blueprint. Tell us more about your journey and your blueprint and how it's affected your financial life.

Okay. Good question. Really quick. My blueprint was this. I grew up in a small town in southwest Minnesota. My dad ran the gas station in town, so we were lower middle income. We lived month to month. Okay. Secondly, we enjoyed our money. That was a blessing. I look back on my experience in a small town of 300 and playing baseball with the other boys in town and just all the small town stuff. And we enjoyed our money, went to the Dairy Queen every week in a bigger town 10 miles away or whatever. So we enjoyed our money, and that was a blessing that I've carried through with my family, even though we got by month to month largely. We worked very hard for our money. I remember my dad running the gas station, driving truck. I remember hauling pigs with him at night, these kinds of things. And so I carried that into my adult life where I would do multiple jobs to make, make ends meet for my family. When I grew up with my parents, I never heard one word, one sentence, one conversation about stocks, bonds, annuities, uh, anything of that sort. Okay, it just wasn't in the discussion. So that's number 4. Number 5, I became a Christian when I was 18. In that evangelical world, mostly I heard about steward or manage your money well because God has given it to you, and give to the church your tithes. So when I read T. Harv Eker's book, I realized I lived my lifetime blueprint both from my family and my early evangelical training to the T. We lived month to month, a lower middle income lifestyle. We lived month to month. We enjoyed our money, right there. I think, you know, you didn't feel poor, desperate, or anything. We'd vacation once in a while and, you know, do this or that, go to the hotel once a year and that type of thing. So we enjoyed our money. Uh, I worked hard for our money. Um, I didn't neglect my family. I'm proud of that. Yeah, I was around. I was able to go to your sports event, except for our handicapped son. That was the greatest limitation we had on freedom.

But well, and you coached most of our teams.

Yeah, and I coached your teams. And so I didn't neglect the family, but I did work several jobs, uh, all through my career.

Well, and you got up at what, 3 in the morning?

Yeah, on Sunday morning, 3 in the morning, and threw newspapers and then preached the sermon. And but, you know, I felt that was honorable. So if you want to catch my blueprint, to me, I felt good about myself when I did that.

Okay, and it is honorable.

It is honorable. Hard work is honorable. Yeah, but you can be honorable and poor. And we were honorable and barely making it. And then when certain circumstances came along, then you really are poor. My fourth blueprint is that I didn't save and invest for the future because it wasn't part of my family or my evangelical paradigm. Okay, so I didn't do it. And then lastly, what'd I do? I managed— Trish, my wife, managed— you know, who could manage their, their budget better than Trish as far as clothes for the kids and shoes and everything, right, Sarah? Yes, she's amazing. I mean, we just made it happen.

She just took Derek out and got him, for $50, got him a whole new wardrobe. She's amazing.

So, we managed outstandingly, in my opinion. We didn't waste money. We didn't go into consumer credit at all. But then also my blueprint was I didn't save for the future.

Well, and you don't have Social Security as a pastor.

Yeah, I don't have Social Security. So, anyway, I lived my blueprint. So, there's my 5-point blueprint. And when I read T. Harv's book, I realized, Wow, I have lived my exact blueprint and I'm now I'm in trouble. So I need to change the blueprint first rather than just work harder, which would be my tendency is to go work harder. And then remember, that was my counsel that I didn't say to you guys because I didn't feel good about it because I knew Aaron couldn't work harder. So this self-awareness happened to me about my blueprint, and now I've been on journey for the last 5 years to change it. It helps that I'm teaching G5 training. Because let me tell you, those roots in most of us, whether they're emotional relational blueprint issues or financial blueprint issues, they run deep in every one of us. So change is not easy. This is not an easy process. You are, as I say in class, if you want to change your financial situation and your life, you're going to have to become a bigger person on multiple levels. And most people have a hard time changing. I'm here to teach you, coach you, cheerlead you. But it's not going to be easy, as you two can testify to. You have hope now. You see options. Fight, Heal, Live is all a part of that scenario. But heck, it's been darn hard.

Yeah.

And, you know, every week is, you know, you're trying to get to this place where passive income begins to be a real factor for you guys. Okay, so I'm not proposing anything I'm saying is easy. But it's revelatory, it's a new awareness, it brings choice, hope, and options that most people don't have.

Yeah, and it is the only path that has even been offered.

I mean, there is—

we've had so many blank stares and so many sympathetic comments, but no one has been able to offer us something. And I think G5T actually gave us, like you said, hope, a plan, Okay, what's the next step? Yeah, what is the next step? And I think G5T really helped us with that.

And you're right, it's not easy. You know, we all go through these periods of self-revelation, and you know, especially in the personal development world where you're trying to grow to be a bigger person, develop new skills. But for us, it hasn't been easy by any means, because in addition to the whole self-discovery— I mean, the recovery process, right? Yeah, it's right. But what it is, is even though it has not been easy and, and it has taken a huge amount of effort, there's hope and there's a plan. And that is way better than being at home broke or impoverished because of your disease and having no hope, because then the disease gets to take more. It gets to take your future, it gets to take your what you had planned for your children, or, you know, all your plans get pushed by the wayside. And so it is hard, but one of the things Aaron and I tell each other is like, I mean, okay, we're not in survival, like, we're not in crisis, we're okay, the utilities are all on, like, we're not in crisis, but for our kids. And that's what I think, you know, we're gonna be going at this for the rest of our lives because we see the value and we see see things differently, and we understand that a job is not going to work for us and our family's needs, but it's easier than sitting there with no hope and being broke and letting the disease take more of your future.

Oh yeah, you know, if you— I was in an endurance mode in many ways over the decades, and I lived smaller than my potential. That's what T. Harv Robert Kiyosaki. I use both of those gentlemen's books, and they both help me see that we have way more potential than we are aware of, but our programming suppresses it. Our culture and the job market in America suppresses that. So a lot of us, both in the Christian world and the non-Christian world, we end up enduring our situations, our jobs, our finances, and we're not energized on Mondays. We may or may not be paying the bills, but we're just not experiencing the gift, right? Right. Really enjoying, because we're maybe stuck in jobs that don't enthuse us and don't really do the deal financially. And in the Christian world in particular, I think there's an emphasis on contentment, which is a good quality. Oh, that's huge. But there's such an emphasis on it, and this is what I grew up— it's one of my blueprints. There's such an emphasis on contentment that I believe it smothers ambition, and that will lead to poverty down the road if you, if you settle. It will. And then if you have any kind of chronic illness, now you're in trouble.

Well, and that was a huge part of my journey is, you know, for years I understood, you know, I wanted to be content and be joyful in all things. And I remember as I would go to Aaron and just be like, This isn't working. Like, I need, I need to be able to do things that we can afford. And I know it's been 10 years, but you know, and that was a hard thing because mentally for several years I would be like, okay, well, I'm not starving in Africa, and try to be content with that. But I didn't give myself permission to have massive needs. And I didn't want to have— I didn't want the money to go to my endless, the endless vortex of Lyme and chaos. I didn't want the money to go to that. But because I was really focusing on trying to be content and trying to, you know, be thankful for what I did have, I did not take proactive steps early enough because even like, um, I've talked about wanting to do the Gerson protocol, and I had read and talked about it and just really didn't feel like I could afford it, even financially, but also physically. I didn't have the energy to do it. But that was a big part, and I know Aaron experienced that too. We were trying to be content with what we had, and we were for a long time, but we were living off of the effort of that had already happened. We didn't have any more effort or anything to bring in more money. And especially like for him, he had a side job that brought in significant annual income for us, but he had to leave town. And now we're in a place that he can't leave town for 4 or 5 days. I can't physically do it. So everything has changed. Yeah. Disease is contrary to life. Therefore, wherever disease exists, life must also fight to exist.

Good job fighting, Lyme fighters! Keep it up. We'll see you next time. LymeVoice contains general information about medical conditions and treatments. The information is not advice and should not be be treated as such.

Okay, Lincoln?

Okay. The medical information on LionVoice is provided as is without any representations, warranties, expressed or implied. Okay? Okay. LionVoice makes no representations or warranties in relation to the medical information on this podcast. You must not rely on the information on this podcast as an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional health healthcare provider. If you have any specific questions about your medical matter, you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. And for you, you consult your parents, okay?

Okay.

If you think you may be suffering from any medical condition, you should seek immediate medical attention. You should never delay seeking medical advice, disregard medical advice, or discontinue medical treatment because of information on this podcast. Got it, Lincoln?

Got it!

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