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Welcome back to Part Two of my interview with Kirsten Samuel! She continues with her journey of healing and saving her marriage from porn addiction. Kirsten holds nothing back sharing the guilt, shame, anger, and the hard work involved in coming out on the other side in one piece. But above all she finds hope, a new marriage, faith and love!
Kirsten D Samuel understands first-hand the shock and pain of discovering your spouse’s porn use. Through the healing process, she also received counseling related to suicidal depression, PTSD, and an anxiety disorder. As a coach, she has empowered hundreds of women to rediscover peace in the mess, heal their broken hearts, regain their confidence, and create a healthy path forward. Kirsten has been featured on the Focus on the Family Daily Broadcast, Chris Fabry Live on the Moody Radio Network, and many relationship and recovery podcasts. Women who work with her finally find the freedom to be who they are beyond their partner’s struggles and find hope that there is a life worth living out there for them.
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Kirsten Samuel Part Two
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast, brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer, songwriter, speaker, and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help. [00:00:24] Now, here is Diana. [00:00:25] Hello everyone! Thank you for coming back today to hear my guest Kirsten Samuels, Part 2 of her interview. I know Part 1 was a little rough, but I think that we have to talk about these topics of porn addiction. And we need tools and we need help. We need hope. What can we do about this? How can we prevent it? [00:00:50] How can we heal from this? I’m not gonna go over her bio again or review what’s gone over very much. If you have not listened to part one, [00:01:00] please go back and listen to that because you’ll miss some very important information. And then come and listen to part two of our conversation. You’re going to be so blessed. [00:01:10] So without any further delay, here is my conversation with Kirsten Samuels. A lot of churches teach, at least the denomination I came from, teach when you get married. You’re not allowed to say no to your husband’s demands, sexual demands, and they say that, well, if your husband’s using porn, then it’s your fault because you weren’t having enough sex with him, or you didn’t, wear some cute little negligee, or you didn’t do the things that he wanted to do, etc. [00:01:42] Did you feel that way when this all happened? I thought that I had failed. I immediately did what every woman does. I’m not unique in how I felt. It was like, what did I do wrong? Did I not give him enough sex? What’s wrong with me? I [00:02:00] immediately went to what’s wrong with me. [00:02:02] Which is a comment I hear from so many women that I coach is what did I do wrong? What is wrong with me? And that’s one of the lies related to pornography addiction. That it’s all about sex and it’s really not, it’s not about that at all. And. Yes, we all make mistakes, Diana. [00:02:19] You know that. We’re all human and we make mistakes. And maybe I wasn’t the best wife 100 percent of the time, even though I wanted to delude myself that I was and there may have been times. And in fact, I can think of times when my husband needed to have some physical attention and I just couldn’t do it. [00:02:37] And I would say no, I tried not to. But there were times that, that happened. There were times when I was so angry with him, I didn’t want to be in the same room. And, the Bible says, do not go to bed angry. And that one was used over me to beat me over the head. [00:02:52] If you can’t go to bed angry. And, if you read that I’ve come to believe that the context is more, you’ve got to work this [00:03:00] out. And there’s times where you’re not going to be able to work it out before you go to bed at night. But at least you have to come to a point where you can say to each other, I forgive you. [00:03:10] We have to resolve this and we’re going to, I’m committed to working through this with you. I’m still upset, but I’m not going to be angry. I am not going to push it to another level. I’m not going to internalize and beat you up and villainize you. because you made a mistake or because we are having a disagreement. [00:03:30] But I, I always took it, I couldn’t disagree with him because if I disagreed with him, then I was wrong. I wasn’t being a good wife, which wasn’t true at all because then I was withholding me and the insights and the understanding that the Lord had given me. And I was not using that to bless my husband to come alongside him as his partner. [00:03:53] As his helper, to do life together because when we do life together and we [00:04:00] were fully ourselves coming into a marriage and we marry someone else who is fully themselves, we’ve got a better we than we have the two individuals, but we need to keep the individuality and I was under this impression that I couldn’t keep the individuality and so I was robbing my husband and my marriage. [00:04:18] Of being fully authentic, and he was doing the same thing. So we had all these bags of stuff that we had to get rid of and get out of here. And all of these misunderstandings and misinterpret interpretations of scripture and relational misunderstandings that we had to work through. As we committed to this recovery. [00:04:41] Now, I don’t want women who are listening to this. I don’t want men who might be listening to this to think that, we did this all right. No, we did not. I was on my way out the door. I was halfway out that door and all I wanted to do was take off. I was like, I don’t need to put up with this. And I was full of this [00:05:00] self righteous indignation. [00:05:01] And yet. I sensed the Lord stopping me. I sensed him saying, are you going to trust me to work this out? Because if you’ll do what I’m telling you to do, we’re going to work this out. Because he was still my best friend. Dave was still my best friend. I didn’t want to leave that. Well, when I listened to your story, it sounded like that Dave was repentant, that he wanted to save the marriage, that he wanted to put the work in. [00:05:30] Yes, he did. He’s admitting what he was doing was wrong, and that he had struggled with this. And there’s nothing wrong with admitting that you struggled. But there are lots of men out there and I hear about it because in my small groups with Mending the Soul, the women didn’t have a happy ending. [00:05:51] They were not repentant. They kept going back to the porn. They wouldn’t get help. Would you have left if he was not [00:06:00] repentant? If he was keeping on doing it or making excuses or how would you have reacted then? That’s a great question and I have thought about that often. I gave him an ultimatum. It was not nice. [00:06:14] This is not the way you do this. But I said, I told him you can have the porn or you can have me, but you can’t have both. So it was very blunt. It was very clear, but it was not nice. And I did not say it. I said that now, not the way I said it then. Not in sisterly love, I can say. It was, there was no love on that one. [00:06:36] Because I was so hurt and I was so angry. It’s hard for me to imagine Dave not wanting to get help because I saw how broken he was. And he was willing to do whatever he had to do to get rid of this because he carried all of this shame and he wanted to break free from that. He wanted to get rid of that. [00:06:55] He just didn’t know how and everything he had tried had failed. [00:07:00] That’s what gave me the hope that I could hang in there. And I just kept watching. I didn’t trust him. It took a long time for me to trust him again. But he kept doing these things every day to show me that he really meant what he said. [00:07:14] Now, it has not been without struggle. He has had relapses. Oh, but what’s happened in the relapse is he, had put things into place again. His recovery was his recovery. My recovery was my recovery. And then together we had to recover and, but he put things into place so that if he got triggered when he got triggered, because scripture tells us when the temptation comes. [00:07:41] It’s not if, or you might, or anything, it’s when. Go back and read that in 1 Corinthians 10. When temptation comes, God has provided the way through it. And so often I think I read that verse of, well, if you get tempted, then I will rescue you and you [00:08:00] won’t have to deal with anything. That’s not what the verse means at all. [00:08:02] It means that God’s going to go through that with us. He’s going to show us the way to get through it. And you are going to face temptation. Jesus told his disciples that, there was going to be tribulation and there was going to be trials and there was going to be suffering in this life. But he said, but you can hang your hat on this. [00:08:20] And that’s my, the KDS translation. You can hang your hat on this. I have overcome it and I will give you that strength to overcome it. So we overcome because Jesus did not because we’re all that great. Cause I’m a mess. I am a mess every single day. There’s, I screw up. I can’t even count how many times every day I screw up and yet I can overcome it and I can learn and I can grow. [00:08:43] And that’s what I saw in Dave was this deep struggle. And this desire and this willingness and this humility in him that I will do whatever I have to do to recover and to mend the relationship. When he saw what it did to [00:09:00] me, he said that was the thing that just devastated him. Because up until that point, he had truly believed he was hurting no one but himself. [00:09:09] Yeah, that’s a common That’s a common lie. Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. Did I answer your question? Absolutely. Oh, that was, that’s so good. I wanted to talk about your church and your support system because you guys had people to come alongside you and walk through with you in this process. And not everybody has that. [00:09:33] No. And so talk about your support system and how they helped you through this. Well, again God promises us in several places in the Bible, in the book of Daniel for one, where he says, before you even asked, I have answered. I had already sent the answer. So when D Day occurred, when all hell broke loose in our relationship. [00:09:56] As I was sitting there listening and in complete disbelief and then [00:10:00] in the anger and all of a sudden, Dave says, I’ve got to figure this out and I don’t know what to do. And I’m like, I got nothing. You know what? I can’t even breathe right now. And in that moment, the Lord gave me a name. And I just said, I think we need help. [00:10:12] And can I call and I gave him the name. It was a coworker of mine. She and her husband were both counselors. And he said, yes. And he said, I don’t know what they can do, but yeah. And so I made the call and they said, we will meet you in 30 minutes. [00:10:28] God, that was the first step. And then Dave reached out to a gentleman that we had known him and his wife. We’d been in a small group Bible study with them for many years, and he knew he could trust Peter with what he was going to reveal. And Peter says, I’ll meet you for breakfast. And it was at breakfast that, well, with the first couple that we met too, they gave me, first of all, they’re the ones who told me you did know. [00:10:53] You just didn’t see the signs, you didn’t recognize them. The second thing that they said to Dave and to me was, this does [00:11:00] not have to be fatal, but you can’t keep doing what you’re doing. Things have to change and it’s going to be a difficult climb. But if you’re willing to do it, it doesn’t have to be fatal. [00:11:08] So those were our pieces of hope. And then the next day when he met with Peter. Peter was familiar with a it’s called the Restoration Team Concept. It’s based on a book called Restoring the Fallen. And I was just looking for it here and I’ve moved it because we’re packing. It’s by Earl and Sandy Wilson, and there’s some other authors there. [00:11:29] And it is a process of. Really a biblical process of restoration that we see in Matthew, where you go to one and then that person works with you and then, if you need more help, you, so what we did was Peter in that breakfast with Dave on a napkin, laid out a whole recovery plan. And one of the things that we were told by the couple that we met with the night before, and again with Peter was you have to get some counseling. [00:11:55] You’re, you desperately need counseling. And and Dave was like, whatever I have to [00:12:00] do. And at the time I wasn’t thinking, I think I don’t need counseling. It’s his problem. What do I need? And so he did. And that was one of the things that his employer also was mandating was that he had to meet with a counselor. [00:12:12] So they laid out this plan on a napkin. And what it involved was he went to, met with the first counselor, that counselor referred him to a second counselor who specialized in sexual addiction recovery and therapy. And when he went to that meeting with that counselor, which was a week later that counselor said, how’s your wife doing? [00:12:30] And Dave was like, well, this is my problem. It’s, doesn’t affect her. And he said, she’s upset. She’s pretty mad at me right now. And he goes, well, what’s it worth to you for your wife to be healthy? to restore this marriage and that just shocked Dave. It was the first time that he says that he recognized that what he had done had completely devastated me and that I probably needed help too. [00:12:53] And when he came home that day and asked me that question, he said, is this how you feel? All of a sudden, this [00:13:00] counselor was able to put words to what I couldn’t verbalize. And I just sat there and I start crying and I said, yes. It’s exactly how I feel. I think I need help, but I don’t know what that looks like. [00:13:11] So we, this restoration team that we put together was ended up being three couples. The first couple that we met with. Peter and his wife, Debbie, and then another couple that we just sensed that in the process of trying to find this, we had to, and then we had to go tell everybody the story of what had happened, why we were asking them to come alongside and walk with this journey with us, which was [00:13:33] very difficult, very embarrassing. And this couple that we eventually went to we barely knew them. Our kids were friends, they kind of met through the school and youth group and all this other stuff. And they were friends. So we had a passing acquaintance with them, but there were, we sensed something in them. [00:13:48] One of the dangers when there’s any kind of an addiction in your relationship is that you become extremely isolated. We had a horrible time finding. This restoration [00:14:00] team, identifying them, because we had Peter and his wife immediately because we’d been in this Bible study and we knew we could trust them. [00:14:07] And then, the other two, it was like, well, maybe the couple that we met with would do it, but I don’t know, and I, there were names I threw out. Well, I liked the woman. He couldn’t stand the man. He’d throw out a name. He was good friends with the man. I couldn’t stand the wife, or we realized that they didn’t have the spiritual maturity that we figured we were going to need because this was not going to be fun. [00:14:30] And that’s a warning sign in your marriage is the isolation where you don’t have people speaking into your life because you don’t want them to find out what’s going on. So once we got that restoration team together and we had our first team meeting, now this team made a commitment to meet with us for up to three years. [00:14:51] on a regular basis. A long time. And we were blown away, one, that they would do that. But at our first meeting they sat down [00:15:00] with us and they said, are we an accountability group or are we an advisory group? And I thought, well, you’re playing with semantics here. And what’s the difference? Well, if they were an accountability group, they literally were going to take over our lives. [00:15:13] There is no decision we were going to make without them. They would have the Right. And permission from us to ask any question they wanted. And there were no questions that were out of bounds. If they were an advisory group, there was no point for them meeting with us because the accountability they were going to dig in and they were going to help us uncover all of this baggage that we were trying so desperately to hide. [00:15:38] We also, in that respect, gave them access to our counselor because they mandated that we would have intensive marriage counseling. They. They mandated some other things, workshops that we went to, to heal, to grow, to learn from. And what ended up happening, and I, every time I tell this story, I see the look on everybody’s face of like, [00:16:00] you did what? [00:16:01] They literally took over our lives. And how do you feel about that? Do you think that was needed or you’re like, you’re out of your mind? It scared the daylights out of me up front. Dave and I both, we got, when we left that meeting, we both looked at each other and said, what did we just do? What did we just agree to? [00:16:17] I was scared. I had I thought this is going to kill me. What actually ended up happening was they put us in a cocoon. They protected us. They ran interference for us. They became Jesus with skin on. And they created this safe environment for us to completely reveal everything we were hiding and to be fully accepted, fully loved, fully known. [00:16:46] Not that they didn’t say things to us that weren’t hard. They did. There were a lot of times I felt like I had been, multiple branding. From a very hot poker because they were getting to the source, [00:17:00] but it was always done in love and then they prayed for us They held us So when we were in our intensive counseling session with the counselor and we did all this battery of tests and it came out that I had suicidal depression and I literally needed to get medical intervention or I was going to be hospitalized it’s that severe. [00:17:19] This group held us. They were our safe zone. And they were the ones who kept saying to me, you’re going to be okay. We are not going to let you go. You’re going to be okay. I’m glad that they sent you to get medical help because unfortunately a lot of churches, they don’t have any sense of mental health. [00:17:40] At all. They think, okay, anxiety’s a sin, depression’s a sin, and you just pray more, read your Bible more, and go to church more and everything will be fine when, some things are medical problems and need medication, need professional counseling, therapist, psychiatrist, that sort of thing. So I’m [00:18:00] so glad that they did that for you. [00:18:03] Permission to go and help. I did. Yeah. And just to be clear, this was not through our church. This group was not through our church. This was an ad hoc group that we pulled together based on the recommendation of this gentleman. And our church really didn’t know a lot of what was going on. [00:18:22] There were a few people in the church that did know and they were very understanding and very accepting, but overall, as I’m sure you felt, Diana, and you’ve voiced it, I felt shunned. I felt the distance when it came out, what I was dealing with and what Dave was dealing with, we didn’t fit anymore and it broke my heart to see that, but it also opened my eyes. [00:18:47] It opened both of our eyes to say, we don’t want anyone else to ever feel that way. We want them to know that you can tell us whatever you need to tell us and you will be loved and accepted. We will walk through [00:19:00] this with you because we know that there’s recovery possible. And that’s what this team did to us. [00:19:05] That’s why I said they became Jesus with skin on because they heard the worst of us and they didn’t walk away. Yeah, I’d be terrified to tell the deepest, darkest, innermost secrets and yeah, you needed that cocoon. It sounds like. Yeah. So when we got to the end of it, and we actually met with them for 18 months because we were able to get the help we needed. [00:19:27] We got the counseling. I continued in personal counseling because of the depression and the anxiety and the PTSD. I had to. Identify what was really going on, where was that coming from, realized it went back to that abuse, that early abuse that I didn’t know how to deal with. so we met with him for about 18 months. [00:19:46] And at the end of the 18 months, I remember again, feeling terrified because the cocoon was open and I was going to have to face life again without this safety net. Although they were still there, we met with them fairly [00:20:00] regularly for the next year, like every month or two, we would meet with them and just to have coffee, touch base, how, is there anything coming up? [00:20:07] How do we pray for you? They would reach out via email or call us or a text message and just say, Hey, how do we pray today? What’s going on? What do you need? Which was so reassuring. And to this day, every single person in that group is the same way. When we’ve struggled, when we’ve had a big decision to make we would say, Hey guys, would you just pray for us? [00:20:28] Here’s what’s going on. And if you have any insights, please share them because we know where they’re coming from and we know that they know us and they know the story. And so it’s been a wonderful process. To go through. Terrifying, but wonderful. It sounded like you were on the accelerated program there, because you graduated early and were on the maintenance phase. [00:20:52] And but seriously, When did you realize that you guys were going to make it and you could trust him again, [00:21:00] or even, like, make love again? How long was it until you got to that point? It was really at the end of the intensive counseling. That was like the end of like this time of the year was when we had our intensive counseling. [00:21:15] And so it was about three months where all of a sudden I realized, I think we’re going to be okay. And this was, I have to understand, I had just been diagnosed with suicidal depression and I thought, well, I know he’s going to be okay. I’m not sure about me. But he was so tender to me when he found out about this depression and he was so caring. [00:21:37] And I knew that I had this, these others that were just kind of holding me up. Even though I went into the deepest, darkest place I’ve ever been. But there was a knowing in deep, I think deep in my spirit. I think that was a gift from God. There was this knowing of I’ve got you. And you’re going to be okay and you see, I’ve already gone before [00:22:00] you and I’ve already placed these people to walk this journey with you. [00:22:04] So you’re not alone. And in that, that next phase of the recovery for me, I really saw Dave’s heart to truly heal because he didn’t use this as an excuse to go back. If anything, it empowered him and he used it as strength to, I’ve got to get healthy because she needs more help too. And we, I can’t keep doing this. [00:22:30] We can’t keep on this path. And so I’m just really grateful for it. We tell people all the time, I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. What I learned about God. What I learned about who he is, the strength and the might and the power of our God and his graciousness and his desire to be in an intimate relationship with us is more, he’s more concerned about that than anything else. [00:22:57] And he wants us, he wants, [00:23:00] he’s calling us to come to him. He’s telling us he’s right there. And he wants us to love him. To let Him care for us, to, to follow in His ways. And I learned what it meant to submit. I learned what it meant to submit to God, to submit to my husband. But I’m submitting to God first. [00:23:19] To get those priorities, to understand, to read the Bible and say, Oh, I always thought it meant this. No, that’s not what it means. Who is the God of the Bible? I had to throw everything else on top of everything else. I went into a deep, dark spiritual crisis during this time. We both did. We both struggled, but we came out of it with a better understanding of who God is and a deeper knowing, like nobody can convince me God doesn’t exist. [00:23:44] No, absolutely not. I am walking it with him, and so it’s been a huge gift. As painful as it is, it’s been a huge gift and God has done just so that the audience doesn’t miss the end of the story. God didn’t give [00:24:00] me the same marriage back. He gave me a brand new one. In the last 16 years, I’ve been more fun, more authentic, more real, in some ways more difficult than the first 25, but I wouldn’t go back to the first 25. [00:24:14] Not at all. I just love what you said about the submission part is it sounds like you are both submitting to God and his will for your life and when that happens, we’re, in the right place where God can use us and shape us and accomplish his will in your marriage. Yeah, and it starts first here. [00:24:35] You can’t heal the marriage until you heal here. We always want to go, we want to go after the marriage. We want to say, well, we got to heal this. We got to heal this marriage. No, we have to heal that vertical, the strength relationship. That’s where our power comes from. That’s where our understanding, that’s where we get the ability through the power of the Holy Spirit to live like Jesus, to be like Jesus, to follow God’s commands, to follow his way, [00:25:00] which is not punitive. [00:25:01] It’s freeing. It’s freedom and it’s the only freedom we will ever truly know, this side of heaven. And when we do that, when we’re both heading toward the Lord, when we’re both saying, I love you, but he’s more, he’s better, I will survive if you go, but I won’t survive without him. When you get to that point and we realize we do the work here. [00:25:22] We do the work with the Lord, we dive into the Bible every day. We make sure we know the God of the Bible, not the God of who somebody else says, amen, but who’s the God of the Bible? Then we start to grow closer to each other because we’re growing closer to God. But if we try to do it the other way around, it just screws up because God’s not in the picture. [00:25:42] Oh yeah. My listeners, they’ve all been, through that. Submission means that your husband tells you what to do and you don’t have any choices and he beat you up. And that’s not what the Bible says. No. The thing is that you come as two. I love how John Trent, I’m pretty sure it’s John Trent [00:26:00] who says this, but a healthy relationship is not me completing you and you completing me. [00:26:06] No, that’s a codependent relationship. You come together as two healthy people. With bringing all your strengths, all of your weaknesses, all of you, into this strong relationship, and it’s both of them submitted to God, that’s what makes a healthy marriage. And submission is a two way street. We’re first submitting to God, and then we’re first submitting to each other. [00:26:27] The Ephesians passage gets misquoted all the time. We forget about Ephesians 5. 19. Submit yourselves one to another as to the Lord. That starts that whole passage that talks about marriage. And I had to learn That is so good. Now I wanted to give you give you time to talk about your book that you have, and your resources, like your YouTube channel, and what can people do if they’re listening today and they realize they need help, and How can I get help [00:27:00] in my area where I live? [00:27:01] What can I do? Well, it’s really easy. If you can find me on YouTube, my website is Kirsten D as in Diane, not Diana, Diane Samuel. com and on social media. If you just search for my name, Kirsten D Samuel, you’ll find me. I’m on. Pretty much most of the channels, most of the major channels YouTube. [00:27:22] There’s a lot of videos out there that I’m putting out information to try and help you. My book is called choosing a way out when the bottom isn’t the bottom and it’s available on Amazon. Or if you go to my website, there’s a link right there. It will ship it directly to you from Amazon. And it is our story. [00:27:40] It’s a much more detailed story than what we’ve gone through today, because it’s it’s God’s story lived out in our lives and it’s his redemption. And I just want to bring hope because the bottom isn’t the bottom. And even though I thought it wasn’t because God is bigger than that. And if you’re [00:28:00] resonating with what I’m talking about and you’re like, I don’t know where to turn. [00:28:04] If you go to KirstenDSamuel. com, right on the homepage, there’s a big blue button that says, let’s talk. And that schedules a free session with me. And I would love to just encourage you to hear what’s going on and help you formulate that plan to move forward. I have a group coaching session that will be starting in January. [00:28:24] It’s called the Aftershock Recovery Method because when you go through trauma like this with its, with abuse or betrayal trauma, which is what I deal with a lot is it feels like you’re just surviving an earthquake and you it’s the ground is still moving. And so that’s why I call it aftershock because we deal with all of those aftershocks and how do we get the ground stable again? [00:28:45] And then for anybody that’s listening to this, I want to give a free PDF download. I was talking about those warning signs that I missed. And so I’ve got a PDF that I’ve, I wrote several years ago called 10 Warning Signs Your Gut [00:29:00] Already Knows. The gut is often referred to as our second brain and God created us this way. [00:29:05] To sense things to, we may not see the evidence in front of our face, but we’re sensing something’s not right. And so these are just some common warning signs, not, I did not experience all of these, but I experienced a good number of them. And so it’s just something for you to think about to start the discussion. [00:29:22] Are you seeing some of these signs? One of those that I mentioned was, he turned the computer off when I walked in the room. That’s one of the warning signs. This, this issue with technology, so all you need to do is go to kirsten d samuel.com/ten signs, DSW, standing for Diana. So it’s just 10 signs, DSW and that’s a free download. [00:29:48] Anybody can get it. If you know someone who’s struggling, send it to them, please. Pass that on. And again, if I can help, please schedule that. Let’s talk button. You’re committing to 30 minutes just to [00:30:00] talk to me and tell me a little bit about your story. Let’s figure out what’s your best next step. [00:30:05] And it may not be, I’m a coach. I’m not a counselor. So it may be that I have a list of counselors and I say, you know what? I think this is going to be your best benefit. It might be, Hey, as a coach, I might be able to come alongside you here. And I would love to, if I can. But there’s no strings attached to that free session. [00:30:24] None whatsoever. I just don’t want you to be without the help you need. Awesome. I had watched some of your YouTube videos. You have some really great just little short videos that you talk about different topics and they’re very good. I think that people would be blessed by that as well. I’ve just been, So much with our conversation. [00:30:48] You just hit it out of the park, Kirsten. It was you were so compassionate and transparent with us. It’s not easy to tell about all your junk to [00:31:00] strangers on the other side of the camera. And this is not a a topic that. that people want to talk about, they want to brush it under the rug. [00:31:08] But thank you so much for being here and sharing your soul your heart, your life and your marriage and your love of God and your faith. I’d like to invite Dave to come on. I know you guys are in the middle of moving to, from Colorado to Chicago. Well, we can schedule something. [00:31:26] Yeah. I have a mixed audience. I have men and women in my audience and I’d love to have Dave come on and talk to the guys. Yeah. We love to tell the story together. And in fact, when I speak to women’s groups and tell this, offer some information, I love it when he’s in the room because I love to point him out and say, same guy, different marriage. [00:31:47] Cause we’re both different people because God has done that work in us. Was there anything else you wanted to end today with? Well, first of all, I want to say thank you, Diana, for sharing your platform with me. It’s been an [00:32:00] absolute privilege and an honor, but I want your audience to remember this. [00:32:04] If you truly believe in the God of the Bible, there is nothing impossible for Him. It doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt. It doesn’t mean there’s not going to be a lot of work. But with God, everything is possible if we are willing to follow his path. And I encourage you to do so because at the end is freedom. [00:32:24] Amen. God bless you, Kirsten. Thanks for being on the show. God bless you, Diana. Thank you so much. [00:32:31] Thank you for listening to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast. If this episode has been helpful to you, please hit the subscribe button and tell a friend. You can connect with us at DSWMinistries. org where you’ll find our blog along with our Facebook, Twitter, and our YouTube channel links. Hope to see you next week!