Hello, hello, and welcome to ride in a she reads truth podcast.

She reads truth creates beautiful, accessible Bible reading plans and resources to help you get into God's Word every day. Each week here on the podcast, we talk about what we're going to read together as a community this week. I'm your host, Amanda Bible Williams. And I'm your other host, Rachel Myers. And this is Advent Week 2. Y'all, Merry Christmas. Are we allowed to say Merry Christmas yet? I mean, why not? Let's go. Why not? This week, we are joined by Tori Hope Peterson. She's a best-selling author, a speaker. She does a lot of advocacy work for the vulnerable, and she has two books that have come out in the last couple of years fostered, as well as breaking the patterns that break you.

Y'all, Tori was such a lovely guest to have for this second week of Advent.

We're going to be looking at Jesus this week, as we do, hopefully every week in the sharing

truth podcast, but specifically as we anticipate his arrival as our prophet, priest and king,

as someone who gathers his people.

Y'all, let's get right to this episode.

My dear Tori Hope Peterson, friend, I'm so happy that you're here. I've been looking forward to this.

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be on She Reads Truth.

And it's really fun to introduce one of my seminary sisters to my She Reads Truth work sister

and for you guys to meet. And so I've been looking forward to this conversation. And somehow it's

December. I don't know how that happened. Anybody? I don't know. And, you know, the reality is it's

not December as we record this. Spoiler alert. I personally said that

just to get myself in the frame. No, literally, like on my drive here, I was hot because it's Tennessee.

But I was like blasting like Lauren Daigle Christmas music. I was like Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.

And it worked. Thank you, Lauren Daigle. The tree behind you guys, I was trying to imagine it having, like, lights and ornaments on it. You know what? That would have been thoughtful of us. It would actually have likes at the moon. I love it. You know what? It's funny and it's just like a reality of how podcasts are made. But it's also really sweet to get to do Advent podcast recordings a little bit before Advent because even Rachel and Amanda and our guests, like we're whole humans who do want to pause for that season and we do want to slow down.

And so I'm grateful to get to do that.

And I'm grateful to get to kind of go first for the community and just go, like, we've read this and we're so excited. And we're so excited, in fact, that we plan to do this on our own in December. Yeah, I do look forward to that. Okay, Tori, I'm so curious because, you know, you and I've talked about a lot of kind of theology and Bible stuff over the last two and a half years,

right, in seminary together. But I don't think we've ever talked about Advent. And so I'm curious

if did you, because I know you came to know the Lord when you were a teenager. And so when did you,

when were you introduced to the concept of Advent? Was that ever in the sphere?

I would not say I was introduced to Advent until even, I mean, years after I was safe. So as you said, I was, came to the Lord when I was 17 years old. And then I went off to college for four more years, which I did go to a Christian college that I think had a lot of good tools for discipleship and just a lot of good people who were role models to me in terms of looking like Christ. But I wouldn't say that Advent became a thing, maybe until I became an author. And actually, you know, when you become

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