76: Faith-Fueled Songwriting as a Balm for Cancer | Lisa Simmons

When the storm clouds of breast cancer loomed on the horizon, Lisa Simmons found her beacon of hope in the form of faith and a community that stands strong together. In a heartfelt episode, Lisa takes us through the twists and turns of her cancer journey, discussing the pivotal role played by her support system, including an oncology navigator friend and HealingStrong, a holistic cancer support group where she serves as a co-leader in the North Dallas, Texas area. Her story is a testament to the power of informed decisions, patience, and the solace found in faith, offering a guiding light to those who might feel adrift in similar choppy waters.

Strumming the strings of nostalgia, we reflect on the melodies that have been our life's soundtrack, from the familial echoes of guitars and mandolins to the first bass guitar that sparked a fire within us. Music weaves through the episode as both Lisa and I share the evolution of our songwriting journeys—from childhood ditties to songs that strike deep chords within our souls. The conversation is an open invitation to you too, to discover the melodies and lyrics that lie dormant in your own life experiences, awaiting your creative touch to bring them to life.

Bridging the gap between songwriting and natural healing, this episode opens up about the cathartic process of transforming life's moments into music or poetry. We celebrate songwriting's power to enrich our personal legacy and delve into the healing qualities of singing scripture. Natural healing and nutrition also make an appearance, shedding light on how these elements can complement medical knowledge on our wellness paths. Join us for an episode that harmonizes the spirit of resilience, the artistry of music, and the dedication of HealingStrong to inspire and empower those embarking on their own health journeys.

HealingStrong's mission is to educate, equip and empower our group leaders and group participants through their journey with cancer or other chronic illnesses, and know there is HOPE. We bring this hope through educational materials, webinars, guest speakers, conferences, community small group support and more.

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When you do, you will receive additional resources such as: webinars, access to ALL our past and most recent conference videos, downloadables and more, as a bonus.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What would you tell someone who's listening, who you know I ask this question a lot If they've just gotten a diagnosis and they're scared? You know, you remember that feeling when you first got diagnosed. It's just takes your breath away. But what would you tell them to encourage them at this point?

Speaker 2: 0:15

Well, I think the thing that kept coming back to me and again it was from a song that I had written probably three years prior, called Before, and that God knew before. He knew before the foundation of the world that you were gonna be here in this moment and this is not a surprise to him, it's a surprise to us, not a surprise to him that you have community around you. If you don't feel like you have supportive community in person, you certainly have it through Healing Strong. If you can get connected with a group, even if it's online, I think you will feel that support and that love and that understanding, and it's okay to be frustrated and to be mad about it. You say, okay, we're gonna do this, and you just you buckle up and get going.

Speaker 3: 1:09

You're listening to the I Am Healing Strong podcast, a part of the Healing Strong organization, the number one network of holistic cancer support groups in the world. Each week we bring you stories of hope, real stories that will encourage you as you navigate your way on your own journey to health. Now here's your host stage four cancer thriver, jim Mann.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Well, I didn't get the chance to meet this young lady while in Houston, but I did see her and heard her sing the song that she wrote about the conventions Houston. Lisa, it's so good to have you on the podcast today.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Thank you, I'm excited to be here. Good to meet you.

Speaker 1: 1:53

All the way over there and outside of Dallas Texas.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Plano.

Speaker 1: 1:57

Texas right.

Speaker 2: 1:58

Yeah, similar around there. Yep, it's a big area. It's a big area.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Yeah, Texas is big. I remember one time driving from coast to coast and half of that was Texas.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Exactly. Yes, it took us 12 hours to go from Dallas. We were driving to San Diego. It took less time to go from El Paso to San Diego than from Dallas to El Paso. That's right.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Yeah, san Diego I was coming out of. So, yeah, all the way to Florida.

Speaker 2: 2:28

Oh wow, that was a fun trip, come and leave it.

Speaker 1: 2:32

But anyway, that's not what this is about. So, lisa Simmons, I know some Simmons down in Florida. You're not related to them, I take it.

Speaker 2: 2:40

I don't know if I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Well, we'll let that slide, because they're good people, so you're probably related.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Probably.

Speaker 1: 2:48

But you are a co-leader in one of the groups there in Plano.

Speaker 2: 2:53

Yes, yes, with Denise, and we decided we can't pronounce her last name, so for Divas Denise. But she's very popular. Everybody knows Denise in Houston. She was a busy girl just saying hi to everybody. She's a great, great leader and I'm so blessed to be able to just tag along beside her and she gives me the title of co-leader, but really it should be tag leader.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Yeah, what got you involved with that?

Speaker 2: 3:30

In the spring of 22,. I was diagnosed with breast cancer and did not know really anything about that. I'd had a couple my aunt, my great-grandmother, had had breast cancer, but they were also heavy smokers and that kind of thing, so I just never thought about it. I didn't think I was at risk at all. And so when they told me that it was confirmed and it was in the early stages and all that, I just kind of started going through the motions of what they told me to do. And of course they gave me the option, even though it was stage one, of mesectomy or a lumpectomy. And at first I think I was like everybody, get it out, just get it out. Whatever you have to do, cut off, do it. And God just prepared. He knew long before, obviously, that this was going to happen.

Speaker 2: 4:42

But in my timeline, two years prior to this, I had reconnected with a friend who I hadn't seen in 20 years and we reconnected on Facebook but still didn't see each other in person. Her husband used to work with my husband and he left that position and so we just hadn't seen them. And I reconnected with her and found out that she had been a oncology navigator specifically for breast cancer, and what that meant was she would take people who had been diagnosed and help them navigate through all of the language and all the things the doctors were telling them and what's scary. What do you need to worry about? What do you not need to worry about? What you know? And so it was just God putting her back in my life in a tiny little way on Facebook and then bringing her into my life as my navigator through this whole process. And she's the one who really talked to me off the wall a little bit, rather, when I told her, I said, okay, I'm just gonna do the double mastectomy, I'm just gonna get it all off. And she said slow your roll. That might be the best thing to do, but it may not be. You don't have to decide that right now. She was the first person to tell me I didn't have to make that decision right that minute, and so she gave me some more things to look at and she was all for traditional medicine. She was not telling me about natural anything, but she was the one who just told me to slow down. I don't have to make a drastic decision. That might be the right decision, but it may not be. And she said in most cases it's not, you don't have to go that drastic. So I did.

Speaker 2: 6:56

I calmed down and I prayed about it a little while longer and decided to go with the lumpectomy in May. And the end of May been a couple of weeks since the lumpectomy. Still I had no knowledge. I'd never even heard of anybody healing naturally from cancer never had entered my mind. And a girl in my Sunday school class who I didn't know, but people had been praying for me and all that at church. So she walked up to me and just sort of whispered. She said you know, this is none of my business and if you don't want to do this it's totally fine. But you might want to look at this website called chrisbeatcancercom. And I said what is it? She says well, he just talks about sort of natural healing for cancer. And she didn't tell me a whole lot about it. It was like she just whispered and went away.

Speaker 2: 7:59

And so I immediately went home and got on the website, signed up for the square one program and looked at it, got his book. I mean I just in one week I just digested every bit of material that I could and I knew that I was gonna do that and I told my husband. I said I'm gonna do this and I just told him a little bit about it and he was like I don't know about that. You know, that's pretty risky, and he knew nothing and I knew nothing. But I said I'm not saying I'm not gonna do any other treatment, but I'm gonna do this too. And so I started eating you know all the food and the salads and all that juicing and then went ahead and did a radiation. I had 20 rounds of radiation in July and that continued to eat and you know, do all the square one things. I did not require chemo, which I was very thankful for.

Speaker 2: 9:17

But while I was doing my radiation, the doctor, before I started. The doctor said, okay, now you're probably not, probably you are going to get like a terrible sunburn and you just might as well go ahead and get some good aloe and, you know, really take care of your skin, and but it's gonna burn, it's gonna, it's, you're just gonna burn. And I said, okay. So I got the aloe and after the first week he checked me and he was like, well, sometimes it takes a couple of weeks before the burning really starts. I said, okay, so come back the second week. Well, you know, I promise you, by the third week you're gonna start feeling it and you're gonna be really tired and you're just gonna have to rest a lot, and that's what.

Speaker 2: 10:18

So the third week I came back huh, okay, and I said, yeah, I'm walking two or three miles a day and I haven't felt tired at all and I don't have any sunburn. So I said, is your machine working? He said, well, I hope so. So by the fourth week I still had, no, I mean, maybe a slight tinge of pink, but I've definitely had worse sunburns than that, and I attribute it to the square one program. You know, I don't know that. That's the only thing that I could tell. And I told him what I was doing and he was like, well, keep doing it, you know. Anyway, that was kind of the end of it. I did four weeks and then that was it, and I just continued to eat healthy and keep going.

Speaker 1: 11:18

So did he declare you cancer-free, or?

Speaker 2: 11:22

Well, I guess they yes, but not really I mean there wasn't like this big announcement that, oh, you're cancer-free. But they say well, you've done all your treatments and we don't see anything. You know, you do the blood work and went back for a sonogram to check it after a few months and they didn't see anything. So I'm going with yes, cancer-free.

Speaker 1: 11:49

Yeah, it's because I mean their experience. This is my opinion anyway. Their experience is that it comes back and they're not used to people boosting up their own immune system and getting healthy, so that won't happen. Yeah, of course that's not guaranteed, but I mean that definitely is in your favor.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:11

Why not use God's way of your immune system that he created over top of medicine? But you know.

Speaker 2: 12:20

And even if it my thought is, even if it does come back I want to feel as healthy as possible until that happens. You know, if it does come back, well, you know. Okay, then God has another plan there. But I've never felt more healthy than I do now. My sister and her husband started doing not exactly square one, but a modified square one, and they had no cancer and they have felt so much better. My dad, who recently passed away but before he passed away he started juicing and when he found out he had lung cancer back in the spring but he was diabetic. He was type two diabetic and had COPD. And I said, okay, daddy, now it's time, we've gotta do this. And so he started juicing and started eating better not totally square one, but better and he got completely off of his insulin in just a couple of months.

Speaker 2: 13:30

you know, unfortunately, doctors don't have, I don't think, the right training in telling older people he was 85, that even though he was doing so much better all around in his health, even breathing better, even though they said he had lung cancer and on top of COPD, the doctor told him there's nothing we can do, we need to call hospice. And when they did that, he just shut down and even though he felt better than he had in years.

Speaker 1: 14:07

So yeah, something about that mentally, once they tell you that.

Speaker 2: 14:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:13

That's pretty much, I think, with my father, even though he was 96 and he was extremely healthy. But they separated him from my mother for the first time, you know, in forever and of course he just worried about her because my mom had dementia, but they had him doing rehab because he felt like I think if he fall three times you know they have to put you in rehabs, which was like a mile down the road.

Speaker 1: 14:38

And of course he was a worable two vet, so they're pretty stubborn, they don't need any help. That's why he fell a couple times. But once he was there he just kind of started shutting down because he couldn't check on her. He kept asking me about her. I said, well, I shouldn't even know you're there, dad. She kept thinking, well, he's around here somewhere.

Speaker 2: 14:57

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:59

But yeah, it's, but hey, he's in a better place now and he did live 96 years, so I mean he was definitely ready.

Speaker 2: 15:06

Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:08

And then, of course, my mom passed away two years ago, so they probably run across each other by now.

Speaker 2: 15:13

I bet they are, I bet they are.

Speaker 1: 15:15

Well, that's exciting. Well, while we're in Houston celebrating the 10-year anniversary, you had a song that you wrote called. Was it called Houston? We have a solution.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:26

Kind of a play also.

Speaker 2: 15:27

Yeah, I just kind of took the title of the theme of the conference and wrote a little song for that.

Speaker 1: 15:34

Yeah, yeah, and we were talking earlier about this, but how did you get into songwriting? Is it something that you were always interested in, or you just got something in you you had to get out?

Speaker 2: 15:45

I kind of grew up. My mom and her brothers and sisters were very musical, so our entertainment was them playing the piano and guitar and singing hymns and gospel songs, and so I grew up with that and so I always loved music and would just write little songs that made no sense but to a six-year-old that I guess they did and just continued to do that, writing poetry and things like that, and then started writing parodies when my daughter was in high school for moms, so kind of mom songs, and that was a lot of fun. And then my oldest son said one day mom, I think you could actually write a song. I thought, wow, ok, so I did. I wrote a song about my daughter's first homecoming dance, called the Homecoming Dance, and it's still my husband's favorite song that I've ever written. So anyway, that was fun and I just loved doing it. I can't not do it. It's kind of just in me.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Yeah, it sounded like we grew up the same way, because, you know, my family is all musical and there was guitars and banjos and mandolins everywhere. They threw the bass on my lap when I was a little kid so I've been a bass player ever since. Wow, of course my mother and her three sisters and two brothers, they all that family, harmony, musical family.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:22

Yeah, you know, you grow up, you think and all families are like that, and you find out no, they're not.

Speaker 2: 17:26

No, they're not. No, they're not. I know I had an uncle that was. He was my great uncle and he was in a gospel quartet. I don't remember the name of the quartet, but they called him Sister Tellus. His last name was Tellus and he's saying so high tenor that they called him Sister Tellus.

Speaker 1: 17:47

Yeah, hope you didn't mind.

Speaker 2: 17:51

I don't think you did I don't think you did.

Speaker 1: 17:54

Yeah, I never had the high voice. I was always the little guy with the low voice. Weird, I was usually the smallest person, his radio voice.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Yeah, and then I was spoiled because, like, my sister played piano and she'd sight read like crazy and I thought again that was normal. I remember one time I had to sing a song in church and I realized I was going to play a guitar with it acoustic guitar and I thought I don't really know this well enough. So on the way up I threw the music to my sister who was sitting at the piano. I said can you play this? Because I don't think I'm ready on the guitar. She gave me a dirty look but she played it like she had always known it and she didn't even know the song.

Speaker 1: 18:33

Yeah, I gave her the beat and that was it. And so when I went to college for music, I just thought that was what musicians did. And then I say to the piano player can you learn this? Yeah, can you play this song she goes yeah, give me a week.

Speaker 2: 18:45

Yeah, week Week I'm talking about right now.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Yeah, and then that was. That was a rude awakening for me.

Speaker 2: 18:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:54

Well, I thought, man, maybe my sister's pretty good. So now I got a caller in a pile of hope you told her that.

Speaker 1: 19:02

Yes, yes, oh, and another thing, that's where I was actually going. I interrupt, I interrupt myself all the time. It's really sad and I was telling you, the guy I wish I could remember his name, but the guy who wrote the song Good Good Father, the court, the worship song he was, he wasn't like a well known songwriter at the time, he just wrote songs every once a while and then he wrote this song for his kids, you know, because it's a pretty simple song, yeah, if you know it. And and then of course, it took off Soon as Chris Tomlin got a hold of it.

Speaker 1: 19:35

It became you know, global. But he said, man, we all have songs inside of us and of course, if you're, if you're not, musical, you know. And then you write poetry, which is, you know, a song without music. Yeah Right, but that kind of stuck with me. I thought, man, maybe, maybe I should have been writing songs all along because I've written some song.

Speaker 1: 19:57

I did the thing where, like I would need the breathe, that we played on the radio they had a song. Their first song was a wash by the water and you know, it just took off. And it starts off with daddy was a preacher and of course my dad was a plumber. So I rewrote the song Daddy was a plumber and it just, and it came out. So I guess I sang that only once. I told him about that. I sang it on the air, which is kind of embarrassing. But then they had this whole segment if Jim wrote the song. So I would just take songs and rewrite them to be parodies. And then one time he was, I did Danny Goki's song and he happened to come that morning. He sings so high.

Speaker 2: 20:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:41

He should be sister Goki. I said, hey, can you back me up on the song, since I can't hit the notes that you do. So I rewrote a song of Danny's, and he was my backup singer.

Speaker 2: 20:53

Oh, that's hilarious.

Speaker 1: 20:55

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:56

That would be great.

Speaker 1: 20:57

That was fun. Of course, these aren't songs that are going to be published Right. As long as we had fun, well, that's.

Speaker 2: 21:03

I wrote a song for my dad. My dad loved to barbecue ribs and you know all of that, so you know the old Holly Dunn song Daddy's Hands. Right, I changed it to Daddy's Hands and talked about, you know, his barbecue and that kind of thing yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:23

Yeah. So I mean I would like to encourage everyone listening. Even if you're not musical, I mean, you can write poetry, and poetry doesn't have to rhyme necessarily.

Speaker 2: 21:32

Right.

Speaker 1: 21:32

I'm not. I'm not good with poetry, but I'm more on the music end of things. But actually I'm encouraging myself. I need to start writing things down. Yeah, doesn't doesn't mean it's going to be known. It's not going to be a new sweet home Alabama or anything like that that everybody knows it may be just for your kids or your grandkids.

Speaker 2: 21:53

Sometimes it just feels good to sing it, like I do a lot of what's called sawming and you just look at a song and you just start singing it. You just think you can use a melody that you already know. Or sometimes the melody will just kind of come to you as you're reading it, and that's that's some of my favorite times with the Lord is just singing back to him his own words, maybe that David wrote, or someone else wrote, you know, and that's that's really special. Or, and you can do that with any verse, I did that with Romans 1513 and that was, you know, just a right, a good way to pray and to praise the Lord, you know, in your own time. You know, nobody ever will hear those Right.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Right and singing is very healing Something and if you don't sing well, it's healing for yourself.

Speaker 1: 22:55

So yeah, people aren't listening. It might not be too healing for them if you're not a good singer, but but yeah it's. It's a very you know, and I never think about these things before, before I had cancer, and then I heard all these things, like when I first heard of Chris Wark which most people seem to hear, chris Wark and then hear about healing strong but right, and before you read his book, or let me ask you, before you raise book, were you thinking is one of those wackos of natural healing or did you just? We're just desperate to find?

Speaker 2: 23:29

Well, I had a little bit of introduction into wackos Several years before again. This is just, I think, god's way of preparing us. Someone who introduced me to a woman who used essential oils and supplements and things like that to heal a variety of things and.

Speaker 2: 23:56

My son, daniel, has autism and he also has epilepsy epilepsy, and so we went to Danette to see if she could help him with any of those things. It it didn't, I can't say it. It certainly didn't hurt him, but it didn't like cure his epilepsy or anything like that. But I got so interested in it that I started going to see her for myself, and then my daughter and my daughter in law and my grandson, you know. So we just became I'm really interested in how does our body heal naturally? Now wasn't into. I wasn't thinking food at the time I was. I was. I was just thinking Let me take these supplements to overcome all the bad stuff I'm probably eating, and so I had a little bit of that in my background, so it wasn't too wacko, so yeah yeah, because you know, I know friends, I hear this story a lot and and of course I got it myself a friend.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Start warning you. Yeah about these non mainstream kind of thing, until you actually read it and they get women. This kind of makes sense, I mean yeah. You know it's not tell you to turn three times to the left and hop on one foot. Yeah, I mean it's, it's actual God-given nutrition from things that he has created and we've kind of destroyed or altered, so you know the nutrition is not there.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Yeah but like okay, this is how it's been all along until pharmaceuticals came along and again, not bashing the community, medical community, but I mean there's some common sense that once you get into it you realize, okay, maybe they're not so wacky. Of course there are wacky things there, like there are everywhere, but yeah, I'm very grateful for doctors who want to heal.

Speaker 2: 25:54

They want to do the right thing. I most appreciate doctors who want to use medical, all their medical training, but they're also open to let's try whatever natural means we can it first, or with what we're gonna do, and that just makes sense. I don't know why any doctor would be against that or Threatened by that or whatever it is. I just think that makes them a better doctor.

Speaker 1: 26:26

Right, right. Well, I'm sorry you never got the sunburn yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:31

I am not sorry.

Speaker 1: 26:33

Yeah, it's kind of scary to think about it like oh, you're gonna start burning.

Speaker 2: 26:37

Yeah. Well, yeah what can I?

Speaker 1: 26:39

say when do you see this going? You just gonna just keep writing music and Just bless your family and other people.

Speaker 2: 26:47

Well, I yes, I've been blessed to find a community of Christian songwriters that is led by Chrissy Nordhoff. She's a Worship leader, worship songwriter. She and her husband, eric, have a group, a community, called writing worship and and they just are amazing people and they just have brought together people who want to learn how to write worship songs and CCM all that. I've. I've been blessed to write with some really good writers and I have gotten some songs on, you know, some streaming services like Spotify and in that. So it's been fun, it's been. You know, it's always I love to write. I would write no matter what. But when you see somebody else singing your song and and you know that possibly hundreds or maybe even thousands of people Get to hear what was in your heart at one time, and now it's out there, that that is just wow I, it's just amazing.

Speaker 1: 28:04

Yeah, it is incredible like I remember growing up in church my the choir would sing the song that I really like called he's ever interceding.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Hmm and it's back in the 70s, I think it was. And then when I moved to Florida to go to college, I Was playing bass with who is now my best friend. He's a lead guitarist and he was phenomenal and I don't know how it came up, but that song came up somehow and he goes. Yeah, my mom wrote that song. What? Oh, no, yeah, wow, in the 90s. By the time he told me that Wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 28:42

Oh, we were singing that when I was a kid and your mom's and she goes yeah, she's still getting royalty checks for that. It's like every choir in the country listening to that song. Wow Like so it's unbelievable and I really thought about songwriting.

Speaker 2: 28:56

It's just for people in Nashville or something, but that's what I thought, that's what I thought until my son, you know, said I think you could write a song. I just and I didn't know what coat I'd never heard of co-writing. I thought everybody just wrote their own song.

Speaker 2: 29:10

Yeah and then saying it. But I learned that George straight, who's had you know, countless number one hits, has never written a song. He didn't write any of those songs. I was like, wow, okay, so it's. It's been fun, a huge learning curve for me and you know, but it's been really fun. And God has just brought so many Incredibly talented people that you will probably Well, I hope you'll hear of them at some point, but many of them will never be. You know famous man, they there's not a hair's difference between you know Karen a Jennings and I Don't know Amy Grant. To me, you know they, she's just as talented, just Maybe didn't have the same opportunity.

Speaker 1: 30:05

Right, oh yeah, well, alisa, I'm thankful that you took the time out for this and it was good to meet you kind of in person, I mean on my computer. Yeah, and I'm glad and I believe you are finished with that cancer.

Speaker 2: 30:21

So I'll take that belief.

Speaker 1: 30:23

I'll declare you cancer-free. There you go.

Speaker 2: 30:25

Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:26

I'll write you a note if you need it.

Speaker 2: 30:28

I will take that All right.

Speaker 1: 30:31

What would you tell someone who's listening, who you know I ask this question a lot If they've just gotten a diagnosis and they're scared? You know, you remember that feeling when you first got diagnosed is just take your breath away. But what would you tell them to encourage them at this point?

Speaker 2: 30:49

Well, I think the thing that kept coming back to me and again it was from a song that I had written probably three years prior, called Before, and that God knew before he knew before the foundation of the world that you were going to be here in this moment and this is not a surprise to him, it's a surprise to us, not a surprise to him and that you have community around you. If you don't feel like you have supportive community in person, you certainly have it through Healing Strong and if you can get connected with a group, even if it's online, I think you will find that you can feel that support and that love and that understanding. And it's okay to be frustrated and to be mad about it, but then you say, okay, but we're going to do this and you just you buckle up and get going. That would be my advice.

Speaker 1: 31:51

Very well said. How can people get hold of you?

Speaker 2: 31:56

Well, I'm on Facebook and Lisa it's Lisa Dixon Simmons D-I-C-K-S-O-N and you can friend me there, and I have a website with some songs on it, but mostly you can just find me on Facebook and I'll post up there.

Speaker 1: 32:16

All right, well, thank you very much.

Speaker 3: 32:18

You're welcome.

Speaker 3: 32:19

You've been listening to the I Am Healing Strong podcast. A part of the Healing Strong organization. We hope you found encouragement in this episode, as well as the confidence to take control of your healing journey, knowing that God will guide you on this path. Healing Strong is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect, support and educate individuals facing cancer and other diseases through strategies that help to rebuild the body, renew the soul and refresh the spirit.

Speaker 3: 32:52

It costs nothing to be a part of a local or online group. You can do that by going to our website at healingstrongorg and finding a group near you or an online group, or start your own, your choice. While you're there, take a look around at all the free resources. Though the resources and groups are free, we encourage you to join our membership program at $25 or $75 a month. This helps us to be able to reach more people with hope and encouragement, and that also comes with some extra perks as well, so check it out. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a five-star rating, leave an encouraging comment and help us spread the word. We'll see you next week with another story on the I Am Healing Strong podcast.