When You Love Someone Through the Unthinkable

When You Love Someone Through the Unthinkable

A Mother’s Promise, Faith, and Fighting to Be Heard

What happens when someone you love is suffering… and no one seems to have answers?

In this deeply moving conversation, Laura sits down with author, speaker, and nonprofit founder Jody Hudson to talk about motherhood, faith, caregiving, grief, and the exhausting fight to help a child who was repeatedly dismissed and misunderstood by the medical system.

What began as unexplained pain in Jody’s vibrant, athletic eleven-year-old daughter, Alex, became a years-long search for answers that would eventually lead to a Lyme disease diagnosis—after countless doctor visits, financial strain, emotional exhaustion, and unimaginable uncertainty.

At the same time, Jody was navigating divorce, financial hardship, and the overwhelming weight of trying to hold everything together while fighting for her daughter’s life.

Together, Laura and Jody explore:

• what it means to love someone through suffering 
• the heartbreak of not being believed 
• caregiver exhaustion and resilience 
• faith in the middle of unanswered questions 
• grief, advocacy, and keeping promises after loss 
• the quiet strength of simply continuing to show up 

This conversation is not about easy answers.

It’s about love that stayed.

If you’ve ever fought for someone you love…
 if you’ve ever felt exhausted from carrying what others could not see…
 or if you’ve ever wondered where God is in the middle of suffering…

this episode is for you.

Pull up a chair. 

Counter Pause

Take a slow breath in…
 and let it out gently.

And ask yourself:

Where am I carrying something heavy while still trying to hold everyone else together?

You don’t have to pretend it isn’t hard.

About Jody

Jody Hudson is an author, speaker, philanthropist, and founder of the Alex Hudson Lyme Foundation. Her memoir, My Promise to Alex, chronicles her daughter’s battle with Lyme disease and the unwavering love and advocacy that shaped their journey.

Today, Jody continues honoring Alex’s legacy through education, awareness, and support for others navigating Lyme disease and chronic illness.

Connect with Jody

Foundation: https://www.alexhudsonlymefoundation.org/
Book: My Promise to Alex on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4u8BqyS 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to At the Counter with the Baking Pastor. I'm Laura. Pull up a chair. There's no rush here. This season we're sitting with the hard days. The ones that don't resolve quickly. The ones that change us in ways we we didn't ask for. Here at the counter, nothing needs to be fixed. You don't have to have the right words. You don't have to have it all figured out. You can just come as you are and stay a while. This is hard days at the counter. There's a particular kind of heartbreak that comes from watching someone you love suffer while desperately trying to help them. Especially when there are no clear answers, no quick fixes, and moments where it feels like no one is truly listening. Today's conversation is about love that keeps showing up anyway. Today at the counter, we have Jodi Hudson. Jodi is an author, speaker, nonprofit founder, and mother whose life was forever changed by her daughter Alex's battle with Lyme disease. What began as an unexplained pain in an active 11-year-old girl became a years-long fight for answers, treatment, and dignity in the face of suffering, many people, including medical professionals, did not fully understand. Through unimaginable challenges, Jody continued fighting for her daughter while navigating financial hardship, grief, faith, and the exhaustion weight of caregiving. Today, through her foundation and her book, My Promise to Alex, she continues to honor Alex's life and help others feel seen, heard, and supported. Jodi, I am so glad you are here at the counter with us today.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I read the book and I was touched. It was an afternoon read on Easter Sunday, and I sat down and I read.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

She started having joint pain and inflammation when she was in fifth grade. And the doctors really kind of dismissed it as an overworked athletic body because she'd been playing multiple sports since she was five, six years old. And Alex was very competitive. She has an older brother. So she was always trying to outdo him and trying to one-up him. So that competitive spirit really kept her going despite the pain that she was in. And after seeing several doctors, they basically said, we don't know what it is. We've run tests, everything comes back negative. She's really a medical mystery. Imagine as a parent going through all of these different doctors' appointments, and that's what you're left with at the end. She's a medical mystery. Maybe she might outgrow this, maybe it's growing pains. They just didn't really have a label to it. Imagine year after year after year, 10 years actually, of not knowing how to help your child. And things are getting progressively worse. She started developing digestive issues. Her weight started plummeting. She was 120 pounds, and I saw her go down to as low as 87 pounds. Um, and when she passed, Laura, she was 57 pounds. She was half of her body weight. That's just what the toll of Lyme disease had done to her. From 2017, the 40th doctor that we saw asked me a question that to this day just gives me chills. He said, Mrs. Hudson, and this is in five minutes of us presenting her case to him. He said, Mrs. Hudson, has anybody tested Alex for Lyme disease? And in 2017, I asked the very ignorant question, Well, no, and what is Lyme disease? So I got a quick education on it. He tested her for it. And a couple weeks later, we got the test results back, and she was positive for Lyme disease. And that began our journey, our last year of Alex being on Earth here, of going literally across country trying to find the proper treatment for a disease that had ravaged her body for 10 plus years.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

One of the hardest things for me in reading the story was watching Alex repeatedly not be believed. What does it do to a person and or to a family when someone is clearly suffering, but people keep dismissing their pain?

SPEAKER_01 5:36

But really, just even right now, when you say that, I mean, I tear up. And I think that was the hardest thing for me because we're taught that if you don't feel well, you go to the doctors. The doctors are your friends. The doctors are going to be able to help you. And we did have some really great Lyme literate doctors that were trying to help her. Back in 2017, so many people, even the medical community, did not know about Lyme disease, did not understand Lyme disease. When people don't understand something, they gaslight you. So in Alex's case, what that looked like was not believing her, thinking it was all in her head, looking at her weight plummet, and thinking she just has an eating disorder. She just needs to get over it. And there were so many times where she was just verbally assaulted by the medical community in those moments of them not believing her, and actually at one point putting her in a psych lockdown for over two hours, thinking that it was all in her head. And so when we got that diagnosis finally, it was bittersweet for us because yes, it was affirmation that no, it's not all in her head, that she definitely has something, and now we can put a name to it. But then at the same time, it was, well, nobody knows how to treat this. How am I going to help her? And social media gets a really bad rap, and we have to be very careful about it. But when I found out that she had Lyme disease and I had no idea how to treat it, where to go, what to do next, we did a big Facebook post saying, hey, Alex has just been diagnosed with Lyme disease. We don't know anything about treatment. We don't know like the next steps to take. Can anybody help us? And I had so many people responding back to me. And the ironic thing is May is Lyme disease awareness month. Alex was diagnosed with Lyme disease in May. And our local TV station, case, had just had three women on talking about Lyme disease and how their daughters have been battling with it. And this was unbeknownst to me because I didn't have time to watch TV. I was working full-time and, you know, trying to help manage Alex. I was connected right away with the local TV station. They put me in touch with these women. And one of them, Lonnie Markham, who I write about in my book, God bless her, she was connected and worked for LymeDisease.org, which is a national Lyme disease nonprofit who has wonderful resources and they can really help connect you with Lyme literate doctors. And it was also ironic that her daughter, Savannah, was a year or two younger than Alex, and she herself has been battling Lyme disease. In that moment, I got a mentor in Lonnie, I got a friend, I got support, and Alex got the same with her daughter. So God was helping us in that moment to provide us the resources, but also to provide us that support.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

What kept you going?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Really, what kept me going was our faith. What kept me going was seeing Alex, how she was, she was a fighter. She was giving it her all. She, every time we got turned away by a doctor and they didn't know how to treat her, she would go home and she would keep researching. She was brilliant. She had a full ride scholarship to UCLA and she wanted to be like me. She wanted to have a nonprofit, and her nonprofit was going to be on Lyme disease. So she was very, very smart. And so she would just keep trying to find somebody to help her because the doctors weren't able to help her. It was a very tough time for us, but we definitely kept our faith first and foremost and just bringing God into all of this. And I really don't know how people, when they go through challenges, don't bring God into it because life is hard enough. But when you're going through these unthinkable moments, at least we had the comfort knowing that God was there. But at least it was our fountain that we would keep getting nourished from, our spiritual nourishment, just keep going back to him, especially in the end. I know you read the book. So you saw Alex's whole transformation within the last three, four months, how she knew in her mind that she wasn't going to get better. So she immediately started transferring this whole um, you know, journey of hers into redemptive suffering, how she could take on others' challenges and how she could use her pain for her own purpose and bringing in a couple of different prayer couples to help her to keep on track with her faith and with her journey and her whole testimony. So really, it was amazing just to see that whole transformation.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

When I went through my breast cancer journey, the first thing I did when people said, What can I do was say pray. And yet, even today, I'll I'll hear someone say, I have cancer, but but don't tell anybody and don't put me on any prayer list that I'm thinking, unfortunately, I have the tiniest little veins. And so getting an IV in me is is not fun. Every time I would go into the cancer center, this same group of nurses and other medical staff were there, and they they would come over and convene and they that we could get a successful IV, that we would have uh successful surgery, and that anything I needed, God would provide. That's not something you get in a regular medical facility. I was greatly blessed with that.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

And you know what? We had a lot of those blessings as well. I think it was just because we were so strong in our faith, and so God kept giving us these signs of don't give up. I'm I'm still here with you. And one of Alex's treatment facilities that she spent over three weeks in. Um, the second day I had an encounter with one of the staff members who just saw me being sad and being a mother whose heart was broken. And he sat down and prayed with me. And then he looked up and showed me where his office was, and he said, You come see me and you bring Alex every day, and I will pray you through this. And so we did. God definitely sends you these human angels, I call it, to help support you through these walks. And there were so many wonderful, you know, God wink moments that really helped to sustain us through this.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

I know when I went through, I I ended up what I call worship in the wait because there's so much waiting. At least I had a diagnosis early on. You guys didn't. And so there was tons and tons and tons of waste time. And if you don't have your faith to sustain you, then it's it's really tough. Amen. I think a lot of people listening know what it's like to keep functioning while carrying something incredibly heavy. What is it like trying to hold everything together while watching your daughter suffer?

SPEAKER_01 13:44

It is the most unimaginable feeling experience. You really feel like you are just, I call it like a twisted sister. I mean, you're trying to keep it together for your child while at the same time, just this unknown, this uncertainty. And I have this one moment, and I and I write about it in the book where um it was December and she passed away in March of 2018. I'm very type A. And when I get anxious or nervous, I start cleaning. I'm sure a lot of people can relate to some dustin' away cleaning, and I just had this moment where I just I needed to get out of the house because I just could feel something like brewing inside of me. So I told Alex, um, who was in the back bedroom, I said, honey, I'm just gonna run to the grocery store really quick and I'll be right back. And so I took off and I'm driving in the car and I pulled over and I just had one of these moments. And I think all of us going through hard things probably have had these moments with God where you just kind of give it to them, right? I mean, I'm pounding on the dashboard and I'm saying, you know what, God, I cannot handle this anymore. I am done. I am spent. I basically gave God an ultimatum. Like, you either take my daughter right now or you heal her. Because this purgatory, this in-between, this unknown, it's not working out for me. And it's not working out for Alice. So make it happen. So funny, right? We sit here and tell God all these things to do, and he's just like shaking his head up above. Anyway, I got all that out and I came back and started cleaning again. And I look out into our courtyard where we have a beautiful fountain, and I saw a bluebird, and I'd never seen that bluebird before. And it just really took me by surprise. And it also kind of calmed me at the same time. I walked back into Alex's bedroom and I said, Alex, have you ever seen this bluebird before out in the courtyard? And she's like, Yeah, mom, I've been seeing it the last couple of months. Now she was seeing it, but I had not been seeing it. And she said, It comes every day at 3 o'clock PM. And I said, Well, how does that make you feel? What does that do for you? And she said, It just really brings me peace. It calms me. And she said, I feel like it's a sign from God. Like he's telling me, I'm still here with you, Alex, and you still have another day here on earth. And in that moment, I felt so little because here I had just been yelling at God, giving him this ultimatum, just pouring out all this ugliness to him. And he turned it around and gave me this beautiful sign, like Jody, just have peace, just have calm. I am with you. Life isn't always going to give you the answers that you want, but I am always with you to help you. And it just really helped my whole perspective on her situation, and it really did calm me.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

What's interesting is you talked about the bluebird in the book. As I finished reading the book, I I sat down and I, in one read, read it. When I finished, something caught my eye out the window. I have a metal holder for yard art and a bird feeder. And there on top of it sat a bluebird looking at me. And I looked, and it was a minute or two after three. And I'm on the east coast. You're on the west coast, so not the same three, but still three, right? I got my phone out and I got a picture. Thankfully, it didn't move. I had been in tears multiple times over the book, but I just sat there and was like, wow, because here we have what we call Tweety Birds, Cardinals, Dove. I had never seen a bluebird and definitely never on that little staff thing outside. And now I have seen it at least once a week since Easter. That is just amazing to me.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

I love that, Laura. And you know, I've heard multiple stories like that. Not everybody who reads the book sees a bluebird, but I feel like Alex just really knows those who the story has really touched them. And she just does it. She she just shows up and gives you those signs. Like kind of a thank you, Laura. And you know what? I've I've got you too.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

I think we should need to take a breath and just hold that for a second. Let's take a slow breath in and gently let it out and ask ourselves, where am I carrying something heavy while still holding or trying to hold everyone else together? We don't have to pretend that it isn't hard. It's okay if it's hard, and it's okay to not do it by ourselves. One of the most powerful parts of the book for me was Alex's faith and how she had you take her to this this other church that wasn't even one you went to because she resonated with the pastor and the music. And and of course didn't know anybody, so she didn't have to explain her situation because sometimes humans ask some really interesting questions. Yes. But even while suffering deeply, she continued to trust God and she served others. You used to take her around to give food out to homeless, and she wanted to put gift packages together. What did her faith teach you?

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Her faith taught me to turn the other cheek and to, you know, forgive others. There were so many times during Alex's battle, especially when she was losing weight, that people were not kind to her. One time we were at um CVS pharmacy and a woman came up to her and said, You really need to put on weight. You don't look good. You you would look a lot better with no more weight on you. And she could see the stairs, she could see people like, you know, looking at her. And that's why, you know, with the the church, we were both born and raised Catholic. We loved our sacraments, we loved our church that we went to every Sunday. But I think as Alex started to decline, um, she felt that all eyes on her, people that had known her for a really long time, looking at her, you know, the conversations. And also during that time, she just wasn't finding herself as connected to her faith as she wanted to be. Unbeknownst to me, she was driving at this point. She had started going out on the weekends, visiting different churches and sitting in on different um non-denominational church services. One Sunday, I found this little written two-page uh leaflet thing from one of the churches. And I said to Alex, to go, hey, what's what's this? And that's when I found out what she had been doing. She said, Mom, I really um have been enjoying this church. I've gone to a couple of their services and I didn't want to tell you anything until I really, you know, kind of made a decision. I really like this church, and they have a service tonight at six o'clock if you'd like to attend with me. I think anytime our children are really leaning into their faith, we as parents need to support that. And I said, absolutely, I would love to do that. And so we went that night. And here again, you have to remember born and raised Catholic, we have a very structured environment in our church. Stand up, sit down, kneel. Don't really talk that much during mass. Well, this church, if we got into the singing and we're raising hands and All this, and I'm looking around going, what is happening? But it was also in that moment where Alex grabbed my hand and I could see her face and how full of joy she was. And it just made me so happy. And I thought, here we go again, God. Like you've got her and you've got us, and you're just guiding her to the places where she needs to be to set the stage for I didn't know she was going to be passing a year or two later. But this church gave her so much support and love. People would come up to her, and not like the lady at CVS being mean and saying, hey, you need to gain weight, they would come up to her and give her little Bibles. They would make her bracelets. They loved on her. And even at the end, when I was bringing her to church in a wheelchair, they opened the doors, they embraced her. I mean, it was her family and she loved it. And the pastor was so wonderful. And when she couldn't attend services anymore, he came to her and spent time with her. And it just really helped her with her faith, knowing that she had this community and that they were loving on her and she didn't feel alone.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

I can appreciate that coming from a Lutheran background. There's a lot of sacraments and we worship in a very specific liturgical way. And then suddenly, when you're at a church where the music is not a hymn or in its praise and worship, and hands are going up around, it's a little uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

And then we just really leaned into that and she loved the support that she felt from it. And it just really helped to continue to grow her in her spiritual journey towards the end. It's amazing, Laura. Like I think about this now. Like when I look back on Alex's journey, like all these different steps and stages, how it was building her for her final stage when she passed. But all these beautiful things that God orchestrated for us. And I think it's hard for us to see these things when you're going through such terrible, challenging times. And that's why I think God sends signs, just like the bluebird and other things, to like pay attention, like try and get yourself out of that little bubble. He's still there for you and he's still there with you.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Jody, I think your story naturally raises a lot of hard questions. Like, why doesn't healing always come? Where is God in the suffering? How do we keep trusting when the outcome isn't what we prayed for? How did you wrestle with these questions personally?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Oh my gosh. It was really challenging, of course. I I shared with you how I wrestled with God as well, letting him have it and saying, How can you let this beautiful child who has given you so much and has had such a servant's heart, how can you allow this suffering to happen? And I think just seeing how strong Alex was, I really tried to embrace that and get my strength from her. So not to wallow in my own pity, but to really support Alex and how strong she was during those last couple of months and really how she was taking on this redemptive suffering and a whole biblical aspect of it. And I share in my book about the parting gift, and I think that really helped to catapult me into where I can speak with you today and others and really be at peace with everything that happened with Alex. But in that parting gift on the day that Alex passed, we didn't know that she was going to pass that day. And one of my friends had just called me that morning and she wanted to come over and pray with us. And I always gladly accepted that. She came over and within a couple of minutes, she called over my really good friends, Alex's aunties, the ones that had really been there with us because I was a single mom. I had been divorced for several years, and I was raising both Alex and Garrett kind of on my own. And so she brought over my friends, Alex's aunties, and we all just started praying over Alex and sharing beautiful stories. And again, it's like one of those moments where when you look back, it's like, I get it now, God, you're setting the stage for me to be surrounded by my friends and for Alex to be surrounded by love to make this transformation from birth to heaven. So when it came my turn, in that moment, I realized that God was nudging me to say, you need to let her go. Like she's not going to leave if you still are hanging on to her. And so I did. I said, Alex, this pains me. It's the most awful, hardest thing I've ever had to do. But you can go now. You've suffered enough. You don't have to hang on any longer. And guess what? You get to play with Buddy, your golden retriever, who's been up there waiting for you. You get to see grandma and grandpa, and I was painting this pretty picture for her. Well, God had a much more beautiful picture because what happened then was Alex, she had her head on her pillow and she lifted her head up off the pillow and she looked up to the ceiling and she opened up her eyes and had this big, beautiful smile on her face, and this gasp of like wonderment and joy. And then she closed her eyes and she laid her head back down on her pillow and she passed. So as I was trying to paint this beautiful picture of what heaven might look like for Alex, she was showing me through her eyes how beautiful it was. And because of that parting gift, I'm able to move forward because she showed me, Mom, that's where I'm going. I'm gonna be okay. And you're gonna be there too one day. And what really brings me so much peace to know where she is and that she's doing God's work now up above. And these beautiful signs that she sends me all the time through the bluebirds and other things. I know that God had these amazing angel plans for her. I'm so honored that I had her for 22 years, and now she's back with you know her Heavenly Father. Do I, you know, miss her every day? A thousand percent. Would I like to have seen her get married, have children, my grandchildren? A million percent. But you know, God had different plans for her, and I have to accept that.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

I love what your friends did and and that you were able to tell her it's okay. Having been been a pastor and walked with several families at the end, I got the sense with each of them that their loved one was hanging on waiting to say it was okay. And I would move the person aside and try and tell them, always met with a look of shock or horror. How can you say that? How can I let them go? Well they're not yours to keep. You're prolonging the suffering. And they'd go back and they'd say something, and usually within five minutes, the person had passed. Oftentimes they'd wait till someone would leave and go to the bathroom. That person had not given them permission.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

And I I love that you knew that you needed to do that. That's something I don't think culturally we teach or express.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

I feel because Alex and I were mother-daughter relationships are all very different. Everyone has different dynamics, but because of everything that we went through together with just um her long lingering disease, the divorce, the she saw me, just always fighting really hard for her. We just were so in one. So it's like sensed it. I knew what I had to do. Again, it was very, very hard to do that, but I knew that we would still be together as a team, as we are today. I mean, we're still doing things together. I'm doing her foundation with her, writing this book for her, still honoring her story, still talking about her eight years later. There'll be a time that I'll be reunited with her, but today I just have to do it a little bit further apart from her.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

I love that you named the book Your Promise to Alex, and that you have started the foundation, you have used it to share what she was doing, and you're using the book to also get the message out. Are there any other ways you were keeping her promise?

SPEAKER_01 31:23

I think that really was the main thing my promise to her was as I said earlier, she had a full right scholarship to UCLA, and she wanted to start her own nonprofit to raise funds for Lyme disease because she saw my struggles in having to pay for a lot of this treatment that is not covered by insurance. I sold her car, I sold whatever I could. I was selling clothes on eBay, and you just get creative, right? So she really wanted to be able to help other patients dealing with this. So that was first and foremost was to start a foundation. And then the other promise was just to keep her story alive, to honor her legacy. And I am not a writer, I'm a businesswoman who wrote grants, wrote business proposals. So when God nudged on me to write this book, it was so out of my comfort zone. But I wanted to keep that promise to Alex, to keep her memory alive. And what better way to do that than in written word? And I thought if I could just touch one person, if one person could understand this unimaginable journey that we had been on, especially the last year, because people would say, How did you treat her disease? And you know, what are all of the symptoms and what does it look like? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's so hard and it's so complicated. And quite honestly, it's so exhausting trying to tell everybody about what we went through. So with this book, it's great because it spells everything out, it shows what we went through, but it also shows people how incredible Alex was. It wasn't just through my words of saying, of course, I'm biased. We all think our children are just amazing. But by showing people, giving them examples of the faith, her walk through this challenging disease. I really think that she's like a modern-day saint. And I've had so many people. Again, I just wanted one person. If it could resonate with one person, I would be so happy. Laura, I've had hundreds of people reaching out to me, having that experience like you did. Jody, I read the book. I feel like Alex, I know her, like she's part of our family. I just feel like I resonated with everything. You know, I've got someone that, you know, has Lyme disease. So thank you so much. I'm able to better understand what that looks like. Or I have somebody, you know, that has been away from their faith and they're reading your book now and they want to reconnect again. There's so many different ways that, you know, people have been touched by this book. Um, and eight years later, we're talking about her. We're on this podcast. You read the book, you saw the bluebird. I mean, it just keeps telling the story over and over again. I can't think of a better way to honor Alex and to keep her legacy alive.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

I I really admire how you've turned pain into advocacy. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

I think when your loved one passes away, I was just yesterday at our local TV station. And like I said, May is Lyme disease awareness month, and I'm very blessed by the great media connections I have. I've done two days back-to-back of media interviews on it. But I talked about that yesterday, about the grief and how we move forward. And when we lose our loved ones, everyone handles it differently. But for me, I'm very project mode, I'm very project-based. So I think that was easy for me to say, I want to start a foundation, I want to do this, I want to do that, to continue to honor her. And I think, you know, people that are listening to this podcast right now, you don't have to go overboard like I did and start a foundation and write a book. Okay. Like for some people, they're like, oh my God, this woman's a wack-a-doodle. You can do it in small little ways. And I did things in small little ways that our local park. I planted a tree in her honor. There's different ways that you can honor your loved ones. So find something that speaks to you and that's meaningful to you and to the person that has passed on.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Like the story can remind us that sometimes the holiest kind of love looks like staying, researching, driving, praying, advocating, sitting beside someone in pain and refusing to give up on them, even when you are beyond exhausted. Jodi, if someone is listening today and they feel exhausted from loving someone through illness, grief, addiction, or other suffering, what would you want them to know?

SPEAKER_01 36:14

What I want them to know is give yourself grace. It's tough. We have these human emotions and feelings, and especially if they are type A like me, when you can't fix things, it really plays on you. Give yourself grace. Give yourself time, give yourself me time. It was my girlfriends that really made me think about that. They would come and sit with Alex while I went and got a massage, or went to the grocery store by myself, or doing things by myself, or letting me read a book an hour alone. You need to refuel yourself because if you aren't doing that for yourself, it's gonna be really hard for you to sustain, you know, this long journey, whatever it looks like. It's gonna take away from you being able to show up 100% for the one that you are caring for. So give yourself grace, make time for yourself, let people love on you. You don't have to do it all. If people want to bring you food, if they want to bake you something, let them do it. Even though you might have a hundred casseroles in the refrigerator and maybe 20 butt cakes, don't take away their blessing, let them love on you because those are things that people, you know, want to do and they feel good about because so many times you don't know what to say to somebody, right? There's just no words, but there's lots of love acts. So let let people help you find that support.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

Absolutely. Giving yourself grace is one of the easiest things you can do. Yep. If this conversation resonated with you, you can learn more about Jodi and the Alex Hudson Lime Foundation at alexhudson lime foundation.org. I'll put that link in the show notes and also check out Jody's book, My Promise to Alex. It's available on Amazon. And again, don't forget, grab some tissues before you sit down. Jodi, thank you so much for hanging out with us at the counter today.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Laura, it was my pleasure. You are a delight, and I just love what God's doing with you and your ministry. So thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

My pleasure. Sometimes love looks heroic, and sometimes it looks like continuing to show up when your heart is breaking. This story reminds us that being present, believing someone, and refusing to abandon them no matter what, maybe more than we ever realize. My friends, hear this blessing. May you know that love is never wasted. May you find strength for the burdens you carry quietly. May you remember that even in the suffering, presence matters deeply until we pull up a chair again. Thank you for sitting at the counter with me today. If something in this conversation stayed with you, you might want to carry it gently into your day. No need to rush past it. And if you need a place to pause, reflect, or simply breathe, you can find more at daretoliveagain.com. Until next time, take a breath, notice what's in front of you, and remember, you're always welcome here at the counter.