Hi, Julie. I just want to let you know how meaningful I find each of your podcasts. Even when I think it's not going to apply to me, I'm prompted to listen anyway, and I'm always surprised how much I learn. I'm now sharing Java with Julie with my daughters and friends. Thank you for tackling the sensitive, difficult, and ugly topics. How we need to hear God's truth and voice on all these things.

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Welcome to Java with Julie.

We are in Colorado Springs at Mission Coffee Roasters with John Dickerson and Susie McCormack.

And welcome.

And we're going to have an interesting conversation given that we're preparing for the

Christmas season. Normally when you hear a pre-Christmas podcast, you hear about happiness and

joy and hallmark stories, but the reality is that for a lot of people anticipating the holidays walking through the

holidays is actually a season of of grief and wondering do the things that we sing about in

Christmas girls do they really hold any water you know if you're walking through something

difficult and Susie you have a very personal story of that, and John, you do as well.

But you also have a book called I Am Strong,

where you talk about how we can be strong, even in our weakness,

that our pain can actually draw us into the Lord.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

So, Susie, maybe a great place to start here is for you to share a little bit about the last five Christmases or so that you've experienced and how they've been different from what you grew up with thinking about the holidays.

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