When Life Isn’t What You Planned: Finding God and Purpose from Prison with Tammy Corwin

Friends, and welcome back to Faithfield Living.

This is your host, Kristin.

There are some things that we can walk through that just feel impossible, insurmountable, and they feel like they will never pass.

Today I have a guest interview for you.

My guest spent 30 years incarcerated.

Can you imagine being in jail for 30 years?

So she talks to us about her journey of how she ended up there, her journey of 30 years in prison and what she did even in the midst of jail.

And then she's going to talk to.

Us about what the last decade has been like since she was released and what she's doing in the world.

But through all of it, the through line was God.

God was present with her.

God walked alongside her.

She still had struggles and daily challenges, but she continued to deepen her faith, build her faith, and now she is doing all sorts of things in the world.

I can't wait to share her story and, and I hope share just encouraging words and that God is there for us.

He's walking alongside us in the midst of whatever it is that we are walking through.

Welcome to Faith Filled Living, the podcast for women who want to find joy again, grow closer to God, and rediscover the woman he created you to be.

I'm your host, Kristin Fitch.

Each week you'll find encouragement, honest conversations,.

Biblical perspective, and practical tools to help you experience more joy, purpose, and peace in everyday life.

Because the woman God created you to be is still there, and it's never too late to come alive to the life he created you to live.

Tammy Coren is a television producer, publisher, author, theologian, and the founder of the global I Am Dragonfly movement.

But her story starts before she was an author and became a theologian and a television producer.

Tammy spent 30 years incarcerated, and she's going to share with us today her story and what she's walked through and how she is helping other people tell their story today.

Hi.

Today on the show, I want to welcome our guest, Tammy Corwin.

She is going to talk to us about her story.

As a young woman, she found herself in a difficult situation when she was convicted of a murder she did not commit.

She spent 30 years in jail.

And we're going to talk about her story of how she transformed her life in jail and when she stepped out of jail, why she has done to encourage and inspire people that no matter what we walk through, God is in the story.

God has a purpose for us and he can redeem and transform everything we walk through to his purposes and to be there and be a light for other people.

So I can't wait to share the story with you because while Tammy's walked through a lot of hard years, she has used many or so much of that to shine a light into the world.

So, Tammy, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's an honor to be here.

Thank you.

So, Tammy, obviously I only gave a barely a glimmer of what you've already walked through in your life.

And I know there was even more than that before the conviction at 22.

So where would you just want to start off with telling us a little bit about what life was like or what are some of the things you walked through early on that landed you on this journey, you know, and later we'll talk about sort of what you're up to now.

Well, thank you for that opportunity.

When I was 22, I was arrested for a murder under the Illinois Accountability Law, which held me legally responsible for the actions of another person, a man I didn't even know.

I did not know his name until I was sitting in a courtroom beside him.

There were seven of us, of us arrested under this Illinois Accountability Law.

Each one of us was sentenced.

This man was the shooter, and he was sentenced to life.

The prosecutor asked me to participate in the prosecution against him and all of the others, but the information he was providing me, I knew was not true, so I refused to participate.

And then the prosecutor actually turned very vengeful against me and said that he was seeking the death penalty and because I would not cooperate with him.

And, you know, that was, that was a turning point for me.

That meant that we had to.

Instead of fighting the actual conviction, the battle changed.

Then.

It was.

Saved my life and the attorneys and my family got together.

It was just 22 years old with a woman with a 1 year old child and a 5 year old child and my parents were raising them.

During this process, we, we had to change our focus.

We had to strategized to change the life, to save my life.

And I ended up waiving the right for a jury trial, taking what is called an Alfred plea and throwing myself on the mercy of the court.

I was sentenced to 60 years.

In Illinois, you could get a day for day good time.

So of that 60 years, if I behaved, I could get out in 30 years.

So at age 22, I found myself in the back of a sheriff's deputy car, driving six hours across the state, where I entered the prison world and where I would remain for 30 years.

Yeah.

Wow.

Obviously so hard.

I mean, all of that, right?

Yeah, well, yeah, So, I mean, I guess before we dive into, you know, some of those years in prison, prison and some of the things you walk through and some of the moments that, you know, God was so clearly there for you.

I can't even imagine being a 22 year old and having that happen.

Especially with you had two children, young children, you said.

So I guess, like, how did you even handle that process?

And I mean, you didn't have a choice, right?

They're putting you in jail.

But, you know, how did you get through even those, those first months, that first, you know, that whole process, you.

Know, Kristin, my very, very first night in jail.

Well, the police came to our house like we were the most horrible criminals ever.

They surrounded our house and called us on the telephone and told us to come out with our hands up.

And we looked out the windows.

This was like at 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning.

We looked out the windows and our little small town and our streets were just lit up with police officers.

We had no idea what was going on.

I, I just knew that a horrible mistake had been made and was being made in the process.

And I was kind of flippant about it.

I walked out on the, the porch of my house with jeans on and a T shirt and no shoes.

Never did not know that I would never enter into that house again, ever.

Never walked back inside.

The police told me I was being arrested for murder.

And I just kind of laughed at them.

And I said, would you mind telling me who I'm supposed to have killed?

I had no idea what had happened and what was going on.

Anyway, that first night at the county jail, I was in this jail cell and there was this air duct across the top of the cell, and it said, God is in this place, carved on it.

And I thought, you got to be kidding me.

God wouldn't be caught dead in this place.

I had been raised in a good Christian home.

I sang with a youth group, got saved, received Jesus as my savior when I was 12.

And that's how far I had fallen.

I had gone down a dark path and I, I didn't remember the teachings and training that God's everywhere and no jail cell was too dark or too dirty or too filthy or too awful for him.

And you just couldn't fall far enough to get out of his presence.

But it was in that cell that, you know, I began to call out to him and cry out to him and, you know, confess.

I'm sorry I, I went astray and I need to come back to you.

And you know, I told him, I said, I don't want the life that I living.

And he dutifully took it away from me.

He allowed.

Allowed it to be taken away from me.

And.

But even in that moment, there a wonderful Christian woman who was a leader in her church in our little town, her daughter wrote some bad checks.

Now, this is back in the early 80s, okay?

So her daughter wrote some bad checks.

And so she was arrested and had to come in and convicted to serve so many weekends in jail.

So she would have.

She would go home and work during the week and then come and spend the weekends in county jail and little small county, just one other female.

So she came and she ministered to me every weekend, bringing me Christian materials, reminding me about the love of God and bringing me back to a strong place in my faith before I entered.

Entered that prison environment.

Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, so many of us that haven't walked through, you know, I get everybody has their own seasons of hard or struggle or whatnot.

But.

But let's be honest.

Some people have harder or they have more measure than others.

And so the honest truth is, no matter what you've walked through, it could be grief, it could be hardship, it could be temporarily in a jail.

You know, I do know people that, you know, that's happened to, you know, whatever the thing.

Here's the thing, though.

You, God, literally, there is no.

There's nothing left of you at that point.

Right.

In other words, you didn't have any of your comforts, you didn't have any.

Any of your family with you.

It was just you.

You know, and so I think that's.

That's the first thing.

Right.

Is like you said, God finds us wherever we're at, even if we don't believe in that moment or in those in those days or years that he could still love us or, you know, why, How.

Why do I want to go to him?

How could I be in this situation?

Right.

And so, you know, to me, it's just amazing, you know, when you talk to people that have walked through, you know, you had no choice.

You were stuck there.

You know, and yet God was still there, even though there were many hard things you walked through, even from that period on.

Yes.

So, yeah, go ahead.

You know, there was no out, There was no door.

There was no door.

There was no bond.

There was no getting out.

There was only fight to save your life.

And that's what it became.

Yeah.

So you had shared with me before we started recording that the first three years were Some of the hardest years.

And that there was a pivotal time where you were waiting to hear back from an appeal on the duration.

Right.

So tell us about what, what, what happened with that and then what you walked through.

Well, when I was sentenced to 60 years, the attorney said, tammy, we're going to appeal this.

We will get that sentence cut down.

We couldn't challenge the conviction because I had taken the plea.

So he's like, we're going to get that, that sentence cut down.

We'll have you out of here in three years.

So.

And, you know, you live day for day for that, you know, three years.

Every day is like a day closer to that three years.

And at the end of the three years, when the appeal came back and it was denied because I had taken the plea, it was denied.

I was devastated.

I couldn't face that.

I was facing 27 more years of what I had already been enduring, and I couldn't do it.

I took an overdose of pills, common pills sold on the inmate commissary.

Little bottles of aspirin that were 100 tablets a piece.

I took 180 aspirin.

I packed up all of my.

My property, the few little things I had in boxes.

I packed it all up, left a note from my parents saying, I'm sorry, I just can't do this.

And I laid down to die.

And God had other plans.

I was.

The guards found me and I was taken to the hospital, placed on life support and in intensive care unit.

My family was called in and told to pull the plug when, if she would survive.

Somehow, she won't even know her name.

She's going to be a vegetable.

And the prison authorities were trying to figure out, well, if for some reason she does survive, what are we going to do with a vegetable for 27 years?

How do we house her?

And because the sentence wouldn't change.

So it was just all of that going on, and my family was very firm and said, if you want to pull the plug, you pull the plug, but we're not pulling the plug on her.

In the mid middle of all that, I'm having a God encounter, and I have encountered God and I have encountered this supreme being of love.

Just saturated love.

The atmosphere was just so much love, just love.

And there's a lightness there.

And it was my choice.

He gave me the choice on either coming back and facing those 27 years or staying there.

But I knew I could tell his will.

You just know his will, you know, all things there.

And I knew his will was for me to come back.

And so I did.

And I mistakenly thought that, well, you know, the worst has got to be behind me.

I've done three years.

I've had this God encounter.

Now he's encouraged me to come back.

So it has to be.

The worst has to be over with.

Well, it wasn't.

I. I served every day of that 27 more years.

The better part of it was why it wasn't as bad as the first three is.

I had had this God encounter, and that is what turned my life around inside that prison.

So now I was walking hand in hand with him in there.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, and how do you do know that you have 27 years to count down, you know, so how did you get through that, that time?

Because it is a long time.

You have to find purpose.

Even in a place like that, you have to find purpose.

You have to find a reason to keep getting up and doing the same thing over and over every day.

You have to find purpose in there.

And shortly after this, when I was back at the facility and well enough for visitors, my dad came up to see without my mom and just said, timmy, what are you going to have to show at the end of 30 years?

You don't get to waste 30 years of your life.

And he challenged me.

He said, change your legacy.

He said, do you always want to be known by the biggest mistake you ever made, or do you want to change your legacy?

I challenge you to change it.

And I started taking writing courses through the Christian writers Guild, and I would write and sell my writings.

And then I paid my way through Bible college, and I took correspondence courses, and I became the first woman to get a master's degree in an Illinois prison.

That coming from a woman who the prison authority said, she won't even know her name, she'll be a vegetable.

And I graduated with honors.

So that is a God thing.

You don't come back from that kind of brain damage, that kind of damage, and go on and earn a master's degree with honors without God being involved.

Wow.

So good.

And it's amazing.

So, you know, I think you all.

I think it was when you were still incarcerated, you also started, I think, a program, Is that right?

In prison for other people?

You know, I think that's when it happened.

Is that right?

Or started.

Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Because besides going and getting several degrees, you know, the last being your master's of divinity, you also did some other things while you were in there.

Well, 27 years is a Lot of times to accomplish a lot of things.

So, you know, God gave me favor with the prison authorities.

He really did.

Just like Joseph had favor when he was in prison, God gave me favor, and the.

The prison authorities began to see something in me and, and about me, you know, and so they had me writing programs of their.

Well, first of all, we set up programming to where any inmate who wanted to go to a correspondent schooling could do that.

Of course, they had to pay for it, but they could do that.

The rules had prevented that.

And so we changed the rules of that.

But we did so many programs.

One of the favorite ones that I did was I set up was a.

We created a mass choir and we would perform for.

For a lot of different entities coming in, all the churches coming in.

But I mean, a big mass choir of over 100 inmates singing together.

And to get 100 inmates on platforms long and singing worship music was a wonderful thing.

It's amazing.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's.

That's lovely.

Yeah.

I mean, that's just so good.

You know, like you said, you were there in.

Even if you didn't want to be.

That was where you were positioned at that point.

And you, you did so much with it and, you know, how amazing.

Okay, so then also, we didn't talk about this before, so just let me know if this is something you don't want to.

Don't want to bring up.

So.

But 30 years in prison or were you able to continue having a relationship, or do you now with your.

Your family?

Yes, my parents raised my children and brought them to see me on a regular basis.

They were one in five.

So when I got out, they were 31 and 35.

They had gotten married and had children and, you know, I had grandchildren.

When I got out, we maintained as close of a relationship as we possibly could considering the miles and the distance apart.

And, you know, it was tenuous.

When I got out, they didn't remember their mother.

They're like, well, we know what she's like in prison, but we don't know what kind of a person she's going to be like, not in prison.

So everybody was walking on eggshells.

Just, you know, they were proud of all the accomplishments I had made inside the prison, but they didn't know what it was going to be like.

And, you know, I entered a world that I no longer understood.

Everything had changed.

I didn't know how to use this thing here.

You know, I couldn't use it didn't exist or a computer, had never been on the Internet.

It didn't exist when I went in there.

So it was like I had to hit the ground running.

I was a 52 year old woman starting over.

I had no 401k, I had no retirement plan.

I had a 30 year deficit in my work history, making it almost impossible.

So I started my own company and I decided to work for myself and you know, I had a pretty good client.

Right.

Yeah.

Love it.

Yeah.

So first of all, I'm so glad to hear that that, that because your parents obviously were raising your children, you could still have relationship and I get it.

Yes.

Of course, when things changed and you were finally free and finally be able to begin your life outside of prison, you know that's going to be, you know, you have to navigate that.

But I'm just, that's so.

That's also a God thing, isn't it?

I mean, that's just amazing.

So, okay, so tell us about.

So, yes, you got out of, when you were released, you started writing, you started a. I don't know if you first started a multimedia network, but eventually you did.

So and I know pretty quickly you were making money and you were starting to support yourself and so why don't you tell us a little bit about that because now it's been 10 years since you've been released and you've been doing, you've been up to a lot of things.

So when I got out of prison, I went to live with my mother, who was 94 years old.

She was having a little bit of dementia.

So she knew that she had a daughter named Tammy.

She just didn't know that I was that daughter named Tammy.

So there was a lot of moments there that were pretty painful because mom didn't remember me and I was struggling and striving to make it.

And you know, she was older.

Kristen and I got out and my mother, she had macular degeneration and she just didn't see very well.

And her house was not in the condition that I always remembered it in.

So I didn't know what else to do.

I was just, just kind of dumbfounded that I wasn't getting more guidance and support from my daughters helping me navigate this world.

So I just started cleaning her house, deep cleaning, cleaning closets and drawers.

And in doing that, I found this bank bag full of coins.

And it was my coin collection that I had as a child.

And I said, mom, these are the coins dad and I had.

She says, oh, I remember those, those are yours.

I said, would you mind if I sold some of them?

And she says, no, they're yours.

You do what you want with them.

Your father would be happy that you have them.

So I took three coins.

Well, no, I just went to a, a place.

I, I drove past with my mother, taking her to the doctor.

And it said, we buy gold.

And I put this bag down on their desk and I said, is there anything worth any money in here?

And they dug around in it and they found three coins.

They were gold coins, $5 gold pieces.

And they said these three.

And they gave me a little over $3,000.

And in a check, I had no ID, no account, so cashing a check was.

They saw the confusion on my face and they said, our bank is right next to the door.

You go there, they'll cash that check for you.

Well, I started a bank account and it was with that three thousand dollar check that I started my publishing house.

So I got out in September.

By November, September 8th.

By November 7th, I had words Matter publishing started.

I built my own website, first website.

And all from watching YouTube videos.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, I mean YouTube is amazing, isn't it?

And everything else nowadays, but yeah, so that's so amazing.

So now I think you've authored.

Is it 11 or.

It might be more than 11 books now, but.

Well, yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

So you've all books.

You, you know, you encourage, inspire people through writing, through your publishing house speaking, you know, so you're doing all these things.

So what, what would you just share with us about how moved in your life you shared with us the one when you found yourself taking all those aspirin in, in on life support.

But where else did you see him moving in your life and just there with you and as you stepped into.

More of your purpose, you know, God really made it very clear to me that just because I was in prison, just because, you know, I had made big, big mistakes and bad judgment calls and not heeded his warning signs throughout my life that he hadn't given up on me, I still had a purpose and he was still willing to walk with me into that purpose.

And the one thing you learn in prison is to walk with God and walk very closely with Him.

It's a matter of survival in there.

So now I was out.

I had to learn how to walk with him out in this environment, which was totally different again.

And, but I learned that purposes, God's gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

You know, they just really are.

When God has a call on your life, it's there, it's not going anywhere.

And you can run from it, but you're going to find yourself in the belly of a fish.

And that was my prison, you know, until that prison spit me out.

And I was able to start walking into that calling again.

And now I publish books for people all over the world.

And to get them more exposure, I launched a multimedia network which includes producing television shows for Roku and Amazon Fire, to get the authors that I have out there a little bit more.

And it's just been a whirlwind experience and a huge learning curve, and still is every day, right?

I can only imagine, actually.

Yeah.

So one thing I know you talk about sometimes is, first of all, you've already shown this in your.

Your own story, but that no matter what we're walking through, no matter what adversity is, that that doesn't have to define us.

And what would you share with us about that?

Because whether someone has something very different, like a diagnosis.

Right.

A health issue, that they might be identifying that as kind of their struggle, or whether they're walking through a divorce or whatever it might be, it's easy sometimes for us to identify or hold on to that instead of realizing that, yes, this happened to us or is happening to us, but.

So what would you share with us about that?

Well, first of all, I want people to know that you can thrive in any situation.

And when my father challenged me to change my destiny and I began going to the Bible college and writing while I was in prison, I was struggling.

It was hard.

And my dad came to see me again and he saw I Tammy, you've got to rise to thrive.

And I was like, it's hard, this environment.

I can't get past the circumstances that I'm in.

So, you know, if you find yourself in circumstances that are hard right now.

My dad was a pilot with my hobby in a little small plane, and I grew up getting in the back of that plane.

And it'd be bad weather and stormy weather, and he would say, just hang on, we're going to get.

We're going to climb.

And we would go through the clouds and through the storms, and we would climb and we get on top where the sun is always shining.

And.

And that's what you have to do right now, is you have to climb.

You have to climb above your circumstances, above everything that's pulling you down.

It could be a horrible environment around you.

Maybe it's a work environment.

Maybe it is that diagnosis.

And you got test results all around you.

You have to climb.

You're going to have to get into the presence of the peace of God, where the sun is always shining, to be able to thrive.

And if you can fight your way into his presence day by day, you will thrive right there where you are.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, I love something that I can't.

I think she's a psychologist, but Edith Eager in her book the Gift, said, and she was someone that was in the concentration camps as a young girl, and most of her family was, was killed there.

But she says that a lot of people, when they're struggling with something, something's happened to them, you know, or, or whatnot, some adversity.

She says they, they can sometimes get stuck in that victimhood mentality of why me?

Why?

But the problem with that is then we're not rising above.

Right?

We're not stepping into what we could be doing.

Even through the hard thing, even in your circumstance or in your place, you know, where you could not leave jail, but there were still things you were able to do if you were willing.

And what she says is, instead of saying, why me?

We want to shift the question to what now?

Or what's next?

So even in the midst of my circumstance, Right.

Like you said, whether it's in the fish or whether it's in the jail or whether it's, you find yourself now not having the home you lived in because you're going, you know, something's changed in your circumstance.

But even in all of those things, we can still say, what can I do today?

Or what can I do now?

Or where can I get support or resources?

Or where can I learn?

Right.

And so, you know, I think it's so important to be reminded of that regularly that there's always the possibility of something, something else that we could be a part of.

One of the things that I, I, I speak on is called own the next move.

You can own your next move and you get to decide.

I could not make the decision.

You know, I couldn't go back and erase what had happened, but I could make the decision on how I let it affect me.

Yeah.

You know, and if something has happened to you, maybe it's unjust, maybe it's, you know, it's.

Whatever it is, whatever's happened to you, you can determine how you let it affect you going forward, and you own the next move.

And if you do that purposefully and you do that step by step, each one of your next moves, before long you're going to walk out of the situation that you're in, you will find yourself on the other side of it.

Yeah.

So good.

Yeah.

So I guess what would you just say, like, that we haven't talked about yet?

How do you.

How would you just want to encourage the listeners?

You know, they've heard part of your story.

They've heard, you know, how when you were released, what you've stepped into and have been building and how God's been there with you.

So what else would you just share with us to encourage the listeners today?

God hasn't given up on you.

Don't give up on him.

You know, reach up and take his hand.

Just very quickly.

I had a prayer that I prayed many times when I was overwhelmed in prison.

And yes, I knew how to pray.

Yes, I was in Bible college.

Yes, I had degrees.

Yes, I was an ordained minister.

But one of the prayers that I cried out often and repeatedly is, oh, God, if you don't move, I'm not going to make it.

And that threw all the responsibility in his lap.

It didn't.

It wasn't how well I could pray it.

It was just a heart cry that I need you to move in this situation.

And so I encourage people to just borrow that prayer.

Say it with all your heart.

God, if you don't move, I'm not going to make it.

I'm going under.

If you don't move, I'm not going to make it.

And he will.

He will move.

He moved every single time I cried that prayer.

Wow.

Yeah.

So good.

That's amazing.

So what would you say, you know, now 10 years after your release, like, life's obviously very different.

I guess just share with us a little bit about what.

What are you enjoying about life today?

You.

How in how you're showing up in the world and in your purpose.

I.

My greatest joy is to make other people's dreams come true.

So, you know, and I get to do that by being a publisher and people write a book and, you know, people have a vision for a television show, and I get to produce those and release them.

It's just like that's my greatest joy that I feel like my purpose is to help other people step into their purpose.

And I get the most satisfaction and joy out of that.

It's so fulfilling.

So good.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, isn't that.

Isn't that it?

I mean, that is how we connect.

That's how we learn.

That's how we remember things, is through story.

Right?

And telling our stories, telling what we walk through, we can identify with each other through hearing, you know, other people's stories, even if we haven't walked through the same exact thing.

We can still identify some pieces of it.

Right.

That can give us hope, it can give us encouragement, it can light a fire within us to go and step into something more.

Maybe we've been hesitating.

Maybe, maybe we've thought, oh, I don't know if I can really do that thing right, you know, and maybe we, maybe a lot of people listening haven't gone through such a difficult season, but they might be on the precipice of, I know God's calling me into something more, but I've been dragging my feet.

Right.

Because that's something I hear from many women, you know, especially women that are, maybe have children and their children are now older, you know, and they kind of find themselves like, what now?

And, you know, what would you just say to those women or men?

But primarily it's women listening.

What would you just say to them, though?

Because I think it's hard sometimes to say.

I think I have this, this call to do the thing, but I'm, I'm hesitant to take the next step.

Well, I encourage you to take it because when God is calling you and you don't listen, things can go south very quick.

You know, in my, in my instance, I knew as a young child there was a call in my life.

I knew that, everybody told me that everybody else saw it too, and I chose a different path and went down the wrong road.

And, you know, so I encourage you to take it because God, you know, God's calling is, is for a reason.

You know, there's somebody that you can help.

You know, there's somebody that you can bless, there's somebody's life that you can change.

And if you step into your purpose, you know, I'm often amazed at the thought of, what if this year 10,000 people stepped into their, their God given purpose?

What if 20,000?

What if 50,000?

Wouldn't the world change?

Yeah, yeah.

If we were all stepping into our purpose.

Yeah.

You know, and I think that's the thing is sometimes we just think, oh, it's just me.

But the difference is it's not just us.

It's us with the power of the Holy Spirit moving through us and with us.

Like, in other words, we are, yes, we can do our part, which might seem small sometimes, but every conversation, every prayer, every action, step forward, right?

To help other people.

Like you said, share your story, write your story, whatever it is, it helps other people.

Just like the woman also that came and showed up to, you know, share faith with you and share resources like each One of those things makes.

It has an impact in the world.

It does.

It.

It really does.

And don't, don't minimize your ability to be used by God.

If God can use me, a woman who spent 30 years in prison for murder, he can use you.

He can use you.

And, you know, we, we're in good company in the Bible because there, there are people that have been used from all walks of life, you know, that made all kinds of mistakes.

So we're in good company.

Absolutely.

Okay.

So, Tammy, what would you want to share as we start wrapping up with just words of encouragement for people listening maybe that you want to add to.

What we've already said?

You know, I learned and, Kristen, I've got a book coming out.

It's going to be released very soon, and it's called Dragonfly Morning Coffee, Coffee with Jesus.

And that's where I start every day.

I.

It's not a ritual, it's a relationship.

And that book is talking about, you know, needing the fuel to get through the day.

You know, running a multimedia network and all the demands that are placed on me especially was still a lot of learning curve in me.

You know, I, I rely on, on the wisdom and that I get from the Holy Spirit by spending time with him every single morning.

And it, it multiplies my efforts to get something done.

So, you know, just begin by a few quiet moments with Jesus every day and watch your life change.

Absolutely.

I was just talking, one of my interviews recently with a retired pastor, you know, we were talking about that same thing, which is when we, when we make the time to spend in God's presence and we get our full measure for the daily bread, Right.

For today, not for the week.

Right.

Then we are ready to show up into the day.

Right.

And we, we have that feeling of direction towards the things to work on, you know, and, and to have that, you know, the fruit of the Spirit, to have more patience, to have more joy in the moments, even if they feel stressful.

And so it absolutely starts with, you know, the relationship and getting in the presence of God.

It certainly does.

And I couldn't do it.

I had to do it inside there, and I really have to do it outside here because in many ways, you know, there's only a few things in there.

So there's only a few things to master in there.

Out here.

There's a whole big world master.

Right?

Yeah, Absolutely.

Okay, so tell us, Tammy, what is fueling you right now?

What's something that's fueling you?

It's.

It's just that that time, that worship time that I spend in the morning, it's worship, worship and quiet time listening to God.

You know, before I turn on the phone, before I check the messages in the morning, I go have that quiet time.

It's purposeful, and I don't do well without it.

Yep, Absolutely.

I've talked about this before on the podcast.

The days that I do that.

I mean, most days I do that.

But I'm saying there are, there are random mornings where somehow my schedule changed and I realized later, oh, wait, I didn't do that.

The same.

Those days don't go quite as smoothly or I don't have the same measure of patience or whatever it might be.

Right.

It's.

So I definitely notice a difference in my, my day if I don't do the things I usually do in the morning to get in the word and have time with God.

So, yeah, love that.

Okay, so Tammy, tell us, where can people learn more about your books and everything that you have going on?

Well, I have a website.

It's called iamdragonfly.net My metaphor is the dragonfly because it's a very purposeful creature.

And, you know, it goes through this dark time, too, before it can actually fly.

But then once it, you know, once it crawls out of the deep, hidden places of the water, it.

And learns how to fly, it's a formidable, it's a formidable insect.

So I, I identify with the, the dragonfly.

And so iamdragonfly.net our purpose there is to help people become who God created them to be.

I love it.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you for coming on, sharing your story, sharing a hope and encouragement with us.

God is in there.

Even when at first we don't believe he could be there walking beside us, he is.

And to keep that faith and to keep just deepening our relationship.

So thank you for everything you're doing in the world to just be another beacon.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's been such an honor and a joy to meet you and to be here.

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