The Courage to Be Known Ep.55: Dr. Mitsch's Reflective Narrative
Dr. Ray Mitsch elucidates the profound distinction between the concepts of being known and merely knowing in this enlightening episode of the Courage to Be Known podcast. Drawing from his own experiences, particularly his recent journey with stage 4B prostate cancer, he underscores the exigent nature of vulnerability and the courage required to allow oneself to be truly known by others. Through a candid exploration of his medical challenges and the resultant introspection, Dr. Mitsch emphasizes that knowing someone may be relatively straightforward, whereas the act of being known necessitates a significant degree of emotional bravery. He articulates that this journey is not solely about acquiring knowledge but involves an experiential understanding that is deeply relational in essence. Ultimately, Dr. Mitsch invites listeners to reflect on their own lives and the inherent risks and rewards associated with the desire to connect authentically with others.
Links referenced in this episode:
- drraymitsch.substack.com
- sgi-net.org
Transcript
You're listening to the Courage To Be known podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Dr. Ray Mitch.
Speaker A:Thanks for joining us.
Speaker A:We will start in just a moment.
Speaker A:Foreign.
Speaker A:Well, welcome and greetings to everyone to the Courage to Be Known podcast.
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm a little rusty and out of practice with doing this thing.
Speaker A:I'm Dr. Ray Mitch, your host.
Speaker A:At least today I am going to be host and interviewee.
Speaker A:And so what I have on the agenda for today is just to bring everybody up to date as far as what's going on medically with me, which has been the major cause of these seven months I have been out and then turn my attention to living out what I have challenged people to do.
Speaker A:And that is you can't lead somewhere in someplace you've never been.
Speaker A:And I am not going to ask people listening to this podcast or my students in any way to do things I'm not willing to do.
Speaker A:And that's really what today is about in my effort to talk through the things that get in the way.
Speaker A:And so there is a huge difference between being known and knowing.
Speaker A:Actually, in some respects, knowing is a lot easier.
Speaker A:It just requires questions and listening.
Speaker A:And I will get into that in just a moment.
Speaker A:Just to give you a little bit of a backdrop as to what has gone into these last seven months, which really is quite shocking.
Speaker A:Seven months sounds long, but it really isn't.
Speaker A:And back in October, I was diagnosed with a highly aggressive form of prostate cancer.
Speaker A:And given that, they wanted to have me undergo a PET scan, and that revealed that I have stage 4B prostate cancer.
Speaker A:And what that means is that it has spread beyond the prostate and there is a lesion on my femur that will be addressed later or early this summer.
Speaker A:And that's what that stage 4B actually means.
Speaker A:If it can spread that far, then it could probably spread other places.
Speaker A:And that's what we're trying to prevent.
Speaker A:And so with that diagnosis, we were.
Speaker A:Linda and I were both in shock.
Speaker A:I completely zoned out at that point, the minute I heard that I had cancer.
Speaker A:And thankfully, my loving wife took copious notes about what was going on, what was to be expected, and what kinds of things I would have to undergo.
Speaker A:And that really is what is involved here in these last seven months.
Speaker A:So from that, after the PET scan confirmed a stage 4B, what I want to say, a stage 4B diagnosis of my prostate cancer, then we moved into a very different strategy for addressing it and treating it, which included something called adt.
Speaker A:ADT stands for androgen deprivation therapy.
Speaker A:And what that means is that they do everything they can to shut off all sources of testosterone in my body.
Speaker A:And so I was placed on a medication that accomplished that.
Speaker A:And then I was added another one was added to it to make absolutely sure that there was no testosterone in my body, because that is the fuel for prostate cancer.
Speaker A:So that was the first step.
Speaker A:Next step was a procedure to try to protect my internal organs from the impact of radiation.
Speaker A:And that was a procedure that would make anyone gasp in pain.
Speaker A:And once that was completed, then the next step beyond that was for radiation and my radiation.
Speaker A:My first round of radiation started in late January, early February, and went pretty much for the entire month of February.
Speaker A:It was to be 20 sessions, which means four weeks, five days a week.
Speaker A:It was interrupted briefly for a hospitalization where it was suspected that I had viral meningitis, which was never confirmed.
Speaker A:Three lumbar punctures later and.
Speaker A:And then I got back to the grind of getting the last sessions of my radiation done.
Speaker A:So once that was completed in February, I was then given a release to allow my body to heal.
Speaker A:Now, in the midst of all of that, I am teaching a full time schedule.
Speaker A:I am meeting with students as I usually do, I am grading papers, I'm doing all the usual things that are part of my job going forward.
Speaker A:At some point I sat and talked to my PCP who has been my doctor for 15 years.
Speaker A:And he said, basically he said, you're going to have a choice to make.
Speaker A:Either you're going to try to do what you can to save as much muscle as you can, because the medications I'm on include an impact on muscle mass and an impact on bone density, which makes me prone to osteoporosis and potential breaks.
Speaker A:And either I could do that or I could teach, but I can't do both because teaching is a all consuming, not only passion of mine, because it doesn't feel like a job, more a matter of what I feel like I get to do.
Speaker A:But it also means that it's a black hole when it comes to exercise and diet and everything else that goes along with it.
Speaker A:So I came to a very difficult decision in March that included choosing to retire at the end of this year.
Speaker A:And so the year went forward or the semester went forward with the end in view.
Speaker A:End that I never really intended to have to go through at this point in my career.
Speaker A:I have been at CCU for 21 years.
Speaker A:I taught before teaching in the undergrad program or college.
Speaker A:I taught there 18 years, but before that I was teaching in the graduate program and so was a.
Speaker A:It was a hard, hard decision to make.
Speaker A:I really didn't want to make it, but it was either or.
Speaker A:It wasn't a multiple choice, and that was the one that I ended up landing on.
Speaker A:So I sit before you if you're watching the video.
Speaker A:I sit before you now on the backside of all of that retirement, letting my students know everything that goes into it and a lot of goodbyes that felt more final than ever before and really culminating in what happened yesterday.
Speaker A:And that was that I packed up my office and I have been.
Speaker A:That has been my quote unquote Home at CCU for 12 years.
Speaker A:It has been a sanctuary for students coming and sharing their life concerns or their relationship with God or their relationship with themselves, all of those things.
Speaker A:And my daughter texted me a few days ago and said, oh, if those walls could talk.
Speaker A:And thankfully they can't.
Speaker A:But my chairs really do look worse for the wear in terms of the number of people that have actually sat in them.
Speaker A:And we have had what I would suggest and what I would look at as sacred conversations that have shaped people's futures in a remarkable way.
Speaker A:Retirement is now the end of the Runway is very clear as the end of June, Saturday, I move everything out of all my books, and before too long, the sanctuary simply becomes another room.
Speaker A:And that's really kind of where we are.
Speaker A:Where I am right now, doing the podcast marks a new beginning.
Speaker A:It's a bittersweet beginning.
Speaker A:I really didn't want to make this, but at the same time, I get more opportunity to sit and share with you and talk about life in a variety of ways.
Speaker A:In light of this particular podcast, which I relabeled and rebranded to be called the Courage to Be Known.
Speaker A:And there's a big difference, as I said at the very beginning, there's a big difference between being known and knowing.
Speaker A:I can know.
Speaker A:Excuse me, I can know someone if I ask the right questions.
Speaker A:If I am a reasonably good listener, I can do all those things that really isn't that hard.
Speaker A:It takes a certain level of commitment.
Speaker A:But knowing someone is not the same as being known.
Speaker A:And being known requires courage.
Speaker A:Knowing requires a commitment to know somebody else.
Speaker A:But being known requires courage.
Speaker A:And that's why I'm taking the time to talk about it in this way.
Speaker A:The vision for this podcast is to interview people.
Speaker A:Normal, everyday, walking down the street kind of people, or people that are a little bit more well known, I suppose, who are on their own journey of not only being known by God, but also by others in themselves.
Speaker A:And I Want to be able to talk to people who can give us as an audience, and I'm a listener just like you are, an understanding of the obstacles to being known.
Speaker A:What issues are there, and what kind of things do we need to know about this journey?
Speaker A:My journey or your journey is not going to look the same as anyone else's.
Speaker A:The challenge of interviewing anybody is always going to be the temptation to turn what they're doing into a prescription for what I am doing or what I am walking in my own journey.
Speaker A:That's the temptation in all of this.
Speaker A:And that's a big deal, I think, in terms of what we're talking about here.
Speaker A:So that's the vision for it.
Speaker A:And I am looking for an opportunity to talk to anyone and as many people as I can to give the audience, the people out there.
Speaker A:I jokingly say all 12 of you that are listening to hear a little bit more of what the journey is like for certain people.
Speaker A:It doesn't mean it's prescriptive for you, but it does mean that in some respects, you may actually walk away feeling that, oh, I'm not as alone as I thought I was.
Speaker A:There are other people that feel and experience this just like I do.
Speaker A:So with that, I turn my attention and have been turning my attention over the last year or so on my own journey and my own journey with attachment.
Speaker A:Because ultimately, when we're talking about being known or knowing anyone else, we're talking about embedded strategies we use to hedge our bets against being disconnected from people.
Speaker A:And when that happens, everything about it is related to attachment and what we learned from early in our lives about the safety of people and who I can quote, unquote, trust and who I can't.
Speaker A:And so what I found in my own journey through attachment is something that if you read anything from John Bowlby, who is the Excuse me.
Speaker A:Seminal work in attachment, and he identifies different attachment, what he calls styles.
Speaker A:And there's secure and there's insecure.
Speaker A:And insecure has anxious and avoidant and ambivalent and disorganized.
Speaker A:So four major styles that he identifies.
Speaker A:I have discovered over the course of my career in reading that there's another way of looking at this, and that is from what one author by the name of Dr. Todd hall refers to as a filter.
Speaker A:So it's not just my behavior, it's how I think and how I see the world.
Speaker A:And the filter is there's a secure, as is typical, and then there are three other ones, dismissing preoccupied and fearful.
Speaker A:And then similar to the disorganized of John Bowlby.
Speaker A:And I don't want to get real deep into the weeds, but I want you to understand that this is not a quest for blaming our parents for how we connect with people or what assumptions we make about people.
Speaker A:It really is more a matter of understanding where we've come from.
Speaker A:And I have an article coming up that is going to be published in Substack, and if you're interested, you can read more about it.
Speaker A:Substack has been the vehicle by which I can help people understand what my medical journey is like and also just what my own personal, spiritual, psychological journey is like with cancer.
Speaker A:And you can find it at Dr. Raymich all underscore all one word.substack.com so just a brief aside, but what I have found out is I realized that I am more in the category of what we might call a dismissing attachment filter.
Speaker A:And what that means is that I haven't expected people to be there for me.
Speaker A:And the backdrop of that learning process has been growing up in the family I have.
Speaker A:I've been only a kid, and then having my dad die at 12 and really being on my own.
Speaker A:And I came to realize and conclude that it's safer being alone than it is being with other people.
Speaker A:Because being with other people opens you to a variety of quote unquote assaults.
Speaker A:Now, I don't say that as assaults in the world, words that are used or anything like that, but a variety of challenges that come along the way that by being related to people, they can say and do things that are really quite harmful and hurtful.
Speaker A:And I never really had anyone to teach me how to manage that.
Speaker A:So I just simply concluded it was safer being alone.
Speaker A:And as I have moved my way through this process of identifying and reflecting and understanding that it has an impact on my relationship with my family, with God himself, and with others that I'm in relationship to.
Speaker A:That I had some work to do and I had some reflection to do.
Speaker A:Because ultimately most of the time we think that if I know something, that's enough to change me, and it isn't, knowledge is not enough to change me.
Speaker A:You ask any smoker or even drug user, they will probably know more about what it is they're inhaling or they're taking into their body than you do.
Speaker A:So the knowledge itself doesn't have any bearing at all on their behavior.
Speaker A:Partly because we're talking about the nature of our hearts and the conclusion that we make.
Speaker A:Now, when I say heart, I'm not talking about feelings only.
Speaker A:I'm talking about heart from a biblical point of view, because the heart is the seat of dreams.
Speaker A:And my choices and my emotions, certainly, and a lot of other things that are very much a part of how I operate.
Speaker A:And so it's important to understand that the nature of our filter, how we see the world, how we see ourselves, how we see God, how we see other people, has a direct impact on how we relate to any of those three groups or categories of people.
Speaker A:We don't see our filter.
Speaker A:It's a little bit like wearing contact lenses or glasses.
Speaker A:You don't see the frame.
Speaker A:If you wear glasses, you don't see the frame anymore.
Speaker A:After a while, you just become accustomed to it.
Speaker A:The same way with contact lenses, you don't even notice.
Speaker A:You just know that your eyesight is more accurate or more clear.
Speaker A:So all that being said, I recognize that that was my tendencies.
Speaker A:And I had to take the time, through counseling and through spending a lot of time, quite honestly, working it through in my relationship with God.
Speaker A:Now, again, I have a lot of people ask me, so you know how you talk about wrestling with God, and never are you more are you closer to God than when you wrestle with him.
Speaker A:But what exactly does that mean?
Speaker A:And most of the time, it's hard for us to get out of the mode of going to God with an agenda rather than going to God to be known.
Speaker A:And so I had that same tendency.
Speaker A:And I would go to God with my heartache and my frustrations and my difficulties.
Speaker A:And it was like, okay, here it is, God.
Speaker A:Now you do something, you do something.
Speaker A:And that's not really what this is about.
Speaker A:Ultimately, it is learning how to live with me and live with me in the presence of God, period.
Speaker A:Not with agendas, not with expectations, not with demands, not with, okay, now you fix it kind of stuff, but with, I just want to know you and be known by you.
Speaker A:And that's entirely up to me.
Speaker A:Because ultimately the courage to be known is really about my willingness to allow people to know me.
Speaker A:Not with a filter, not living behind the stained glass, projecting an image that they interact with, rather than the real me.
Speaker A:That's behind because I know me.
Speaker A:And a lot of times, as I've said in other classes that I've taught, if you knew me the way I know me, you wouldn't like me either.
Speaker A:So I'm not taken that risk.
Speaker A:And so that has been the impetus for a lot of my own challenge of going through this.
Speaker A:And I continue to.
Speaker A:I'm not free of it.
Speaker A:And I have found this the Substack writing that I've done has done helped me put some things into perspective that I needed.
Speaker A:So all of that to say that really has been the journey before.
Speaker A:All that came up in October, and October entered a new chapter, and it was entitled Cancer, because cancer changes everything.
Speaker A:It's, as I say in my substack, it is news that changes everything.
Speaker A:I have medications.
Speaker A:I have a blurring array of medications that I take.
Speaker A:I have procedures.
Speaker A:I have blood draws every two weeks.
Speaker A:And last but not least, I have another round of radiation that I get to look forward to.
Speaker A:And radiation is not without its risks and not without its impact.
Speaker A:It has taken me three months to recover from what has gone on with the radiation that was primarily directed almost entirely into my pelvic area because that's where prostate is in men.
Speaker A:And so this is the new chapter.
Speaker A:And it changes the landscape.
Speaker A:Well, I shouldn't say it changes the landscape.
Speaker A:It changes how we see the landscape.
Speaker A:And so in this continuing journey now, new things open up and new decisions are made, like retiring or what the next leg of this journey will look like.
Speaker A:And one of the major things that I have become aware of and more passionate about than I have been ever before is the difference between knowing something and.
Speaker A:And experiencing something.
Speaker A:And what actually gets in the way of being known is what we know versus how we relate.
Speaker A:Because how we relate are automatic patterns of connecting and talking and relating to people that we don't even notice.
Speaker A:We assume certain things about what we do and how we relate to, but we don't even notice it.
Speaker A:And so I have found recently, and I'm very much sensitized to it now, is how often people will tell me what they know, what they know about God, what they know about God's grace, what they know about His Word.
Speaker A:And that's all well and good, but then they turn around and tell me all the struggles that they have, excuse me, about changing their behavior.
Speaker A:And it's in changing their behavior that it's about how they automatically relate.
Speaker A:Their knowledge is completely disconnected from how they relate.
Speaker A:And they don't pay attention to the assumptions they make, not only about themselves, but about other people, and particularly about God.
Speaker A:And the reality is, as you may know, all there is to know about grace, but it doesn't make any difference at all in your attempt at being known by anyone else or even God, because grace is not a pass.
Speaker A:It is not, oh, I'll give you grace.
Speaker A:I have had so many students over the years, excuse me, who have said, have turned in a paper late and said something about needing grace.
Speaker A:And I said, I will often write back to them and say, you don't need grace.
Speaker A:You got all the grace you need.
Speaker A:What you need is leniency, because grace is not a pass.
Speaker A:The father on the road, when he met his son, offered him grace.
Speaker A:It restored him.
Speaker A:It met him before he even got home.
Speaker A:And there are still consequences to be paid for the choices that we make.
Speaker A:And that's true here as well.
Speaker A:And so being known by anyone is risking grace.
Speaker A:And whether or not we will accept ourselves as we are or whether or not we will trust that God loves us and accepts us as we are, not as we should be, because we'll never be what we should be.
Speaker A:The vision of what we should be is an illusion.
Speaker A:It is meant to manage and control other people's perspectives about us.
Speaker A:So how do I get past all of this?
Speaker A:And the challenge is in the context of relationship.
Speaker A:And that's more of a push than meets the eye.
Speaker A:It's more of a difficulty than meets the eye because it requires vulnerability and risk.
Speaker A:We cannot find trust.
Speaker A:We cannot find grace without risk.
Speaker A:It's impossible.
Speaker A:And if I'm not willing to take that kind of risk to actually allow people to see the interior life that I lead, not the exterior one, which is filled with what I know, then I'm not going to be known and I'll just feel alone in a group of people.
Speaker A:So answering the question how only tempts us into doing more and doing it the right way.
Speaker A:It requires no trust.
Speaker A:Ultimately, am I willing to live into the nature of grace?
Speaker A:Because we will find that nothing changes because of what you know, but you will find a way to change in the context of relationship, that you can risk being known and finding grace most of the time.
Speaker A:And I've been doing groups at CCU for all 18 of the years that I've been there.
Speaker A:Most people do not share because they assume people will think about them the way they think about them.
Speaker A:And when people don't, they are confronted with a very, very difficult choice.
Speaker A:Do I believe them or do I believe me?
Speaker A:Now, I already know the difficulty of what comes from believing me.
Speaker A:I live with that every day.
Speaker A:It's always there.
Speaker A:But when someone else.
Speaker A:And most of the time, I have found this to be true, when someone else offers me grace, I will say two words that always gets in the way.
Speaker A:Yeah, but which means that if you knew me the way I know me, you wouldn't like me either.
Speaker A:And so you don't have any standing to Offer me this grace.
Speaker A:I have to have a reason to allow you to offer me this grace, which is, by the way, just more law, because the power of grace will shift perspectives in our lives.
Speaker A:And quite honestly, we are terrified of freedom and we are terrified of change.
Speaker A:And I'm looking in the mirror, I'm saying these things to me.
Speaker A:I recognize that I'd rather keep things the same, because at least then I know the rules of engagement.
Speaker A:I know the landscape.
Speaker A:I know how to behave.
Speaker A:I know how to manage things.
Speaker A:I know how to control outcomes.
Speaker A:I know all of that.
Speaker A:But the longing of our hearts, the deepest longing of our hearts is to be known.
Speaker A:And if all of my life is spent trying to manage how other people think about me, I will never be known.
Speaker A:I will always get what I've always gotten.
Speaker A:And so there are plenty of opportunities that exist.
Speaker A:Not many.
Speaker A:I won't say I said plenty.
Speaker A:There aren't many.
Speaker A:Because there are lots of times where we think someone is safe when they're not.
Speaker A:And they meet us with the very same shame that we've already been living in, which is a whole other topic and a whole other obstacle behind being known is the internal and even external environment of shame that we live in.
Speaker A:And so, yes, it is always easier to settle for knowing something rather than experiencing something, because experiencing something always requires risk, it always requires trust, and it always requires looking at the world a little differently than I usually have.
Speaker A:One of the things that we ultimately have to talk about is that it starts with being able to discern who is actually safe to entrust your story to, because not everyone is.
Speaker A:They aren't because they're a family.
Speaker A:They aren't because they're Christians.
Speaker A:I have seen way more people than that are not Christ followers more reliable and safe than people that are.
Speaker A:Partly because, unfortunately, our Christianity, we think, requires us to correct somebody's perspective rather than connect with them by saying a shortened version of, yeah, me too.
Speaker A:I've been there before.
Speaker A:And so one of the greatest obstacles to being known is the illusion that if I know all the right things, that will change everything else.
Speaker A:Now, listen, I am not telling you to not know anything.
Speaker A:I am not saying that.
Speaker A:But knowledge in and of itself is not enough.
Speaker A:It is experiencing the love and grace of God, the love and grace of Jesus, in the context of relationship with someone who understands and knows that they're broken just like you, and they don't have a stone to throw.
Speaker A:If anything, they are the kind of people that will lock arms and say, yeah, I been down this road before it is really hard.
Speaker A:It is really tough.
Speaker A:I can't offer you any solutions, but I'm willing to walk with you on this path.
Speaker A:And that really is very much a part, I think, of the context of what we're talking about in a podcast like this is I want, and I hope to find people that will talk about what it means to be known by other people.
Speaker A:What did the journey take?
Speaker A:What were the key points?
Speaker A:What were the key things that actually changed enough for them to be able to trust that grace can be found in its purest form, which really is really quite challenging.
Speaker A:And challenging doesn't quite cut it.
Speaker A:I mean, the reality is, is that actually, if anything, it's so disruptive graces, and that's exactly the basis on which Jesus was crucified.
Speaker A:So some observations, some thoughts to go with all of this that I think is important to understand when we're talking about the courage to be known.
Speaker A:I have turned to writing as a means of being known.
Speaker A:It's risky business.
Speaker A:I can very easily be misunderstood at this point.
Speaker A:I've already looked cancer and death in the face.
Speaker A:What else do you have?
Speaker A:But I am going to communicate and talk about the things that are most relevant to us, living lives as we do and trying to find the kind of relationships where we feel safe, where someone is willing to say, me too, and someone is willing to enter our world not with something to correct us with, but with something that will connect with the kinds of things that we face.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:All right, well, that's enough for today.
Speaker A:Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker A:A couple housekeeping things.
Speaker A:Now that I am moving into retirement, SGI takes a bigger role in terms of trying to prepare, to sponsor silent retreats, to sponsor more materials.
Speaker A:There is now an E course on the website that is available to you.
Speaker A:First five sessions are free.
Speaker A:That introduces these concepts of safety and boundaries and the fundamentals of grace and shame and what goes into it.
Speaker A:But it's called the Journey from Shame to Grace.
Speaker A:It's 20 sessions.
Speaker A:You get five of them free.
Speaker A:The other ones are for a fee to manage the production and manage everything that I put together.
Speaker A:It is a walk into one of my classrooms to talk about shame and grace.
Speaker A:And that's what that really is there for.
Speaker A:My hope, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.
Speaker A:My hope is to produce another one called From Morning to Mourning, which is a grief and loss E course.
Speaker A:And maybe there will be others to come.
Speaker A:I don't know what the Lord has and what God opens the doors for me to be able to do.
Speaker A:But those are shame and Grace is there.
Speaker A:You can already get in touch with it.
Speaker A:Go to sgi-net.org and look at Under E courses and you'll see the journey from Shame to Grace.
Speaker A:There are lots of other resources on the website under Free Resources that you can check out the podcast.
Speaker A:This podcast will certainly be there.
Speaker A:I am considering starting up another one just to be a Q and A kind of thing that people might have questions about that I can address in kind of short form.
Speaker A:Podcast to answer questions and react and thought and whatever thoughts I have about that.
Speaker A:That's not yet and it's coming but it's just not ready yet.
Speaker A:So also be sure to check out my substack@drraymitch.substack.com and you'll get a view.
Speaker A:If you're interested in the medical piece of it and my medical journey and my cancer journey, but also my reactions and thoughts about death and about suffering and about sorrow and what ultimately goes into that, Please subscribe.
Speaker A:All of any of these things that has a fee attached to it is to support and build the base for Stained Glass International, which is what SGI is to reach out to the younger generation to talk about spiritual formation perhaps in a way that they have never heard it before.
Speaker A:So spread the word and let other people know and have them subscribe to the substack or have them become a member of our community online.
Speaker A:My hope is that we will have other opportunities to sit and talk, even if it is by screen, which is not my preference.
Speaker A:But it's something and it's a way to talk about life as as we know it and be able to experience the grace and love that Jesus offers not only to me, but I can offer to you as well in a context like that.
Speaker A:So there are lots of things that could happen they won't without your support and your faithful prayer support in what I'm trying to do through sci and I certainly hope others will join.
Speaker A:I know I have others out there that are praying for us and supporting us and anything you can do.
Speaker A:We are a tax deductible organization According to the IRS we are a 503c non profit organization.
Speaker A:So any donations you make will be tax deductible.
Speaker A:That is huge helpful for the future of what we what I hope to accomplish, what I hope for God to accomplish through Stained Glass International so that we can be people that can be seen and we can be people that are known.
Speaker A:And that is.
Speaker A:That is the punchline.
Speaker A:Maybe I should say the tagline of everything goes into it.
Speaker A:So communities for the heart and outposts for the heart and communities for the soul.
Speaker A:So that's it for today.
Speaker A:Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker A:I really appreciate it.
Speaker A:And until next time, love you later.
Speaker A:Bye.
Speaker A:Sa.
