Oh my goodness, friends. It has been a minute, hasn't it? Well, it's been about five months to be exact. I have missed you. Welcome back to the Ruth Joe Simon's podcast. I am so delighted to be back together again for the last couple of months. I would see you all out on the road or for events and you'd share how much you love

the podcast and ask when it was coming back. And every time I'd say, I am trying to get back,

but we've had a couple of things going on. So today's welcome back episode is me sharing about

where I've been and all that's been going on in the last five, six months and where we're

headed. So friends, thank you so much for joining me here. It is a privilege to have these

coffee chat conversations. Hope you grabbed your tea or coffee and settling in. Let's just

consider this a catch-up that we've needed for a long time.

First, so I'm assuming that some of you may have already seen in some of my updates on social media,

but the last couple months have been intense.

In fact, we kind of wrapped up 2025. I don't know if you remember,

I turned 50. Way of the Wildflower came out. You all welcomed the Way of the Wildflower so much

that it was selling out everywhere constantly. It was a really good problem to have.

We went into Christmas and the new year hit us and we had wonderful and hard things all at the same time.

Wonderful in that my oldest Caleb got engaged to Maddie and they are getting married here very,

very soon.

So soon that at the time of this recording, I'm feeling just a little

bit, just consumed. I'm feeling a little consumed with big feelings, big schedules, lots of

to-do lists, and just a prayerful heart about all that's coming around the corner for our family and for

their new family. So that was super exciting at the top of the year. But we basically, one of

the things that we realized was that my third son, Judah, who you all have gotten to know

through his journey with the spine surgery

and that traumatic mountain biking accident, his freshman year of college. We started noticing that he

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