Hi, just checking in, seeing how you're doing today.

And just seeing if you might want to take a little break, step away from the noise of the world for just a minute and connect back with you.

If so, let's take a deep breath in and breathe out and let it all settle.

I'm your host, Michael Gallion, and this is letting it settle.

Now, before we begin, I just want to offer you a gentle reminder about something that might

be weighing on your heart right now.

If you're loving someone who is struggling, whether that's with depression or anxiety or

grief or addiction, or just one of life's inevitable difficult seasons.

I want you to know that your worth is not tied to whether they get better.

Your love is not measured by your ability to fix their pain.

And the way they're showing up right now is not all of who they are.

I know it's hard to watch someone you care about suffer.

I know the helplessness that comes when you so desperately want to take their pain away,

but you realize that you can't.

I know the exhaustion of caring so deeply that their struggles become your struggles,

their pain becomes your pain.

But what I want to offer today is a different way of loving,

one that's rooted in presence rather than fixing, in trust rather than

control, in understanding that sometimes the most loving thing you can do is simply witness

someone's winter season without trying to rush them into spring.

Just like the trees outside your window go through seasons of growth and dormancy,

of flowering and shedding, the people we love go through seasons too. And sometimes, learning to love

...