Interview: Kim Gilson ~ Dimes & Signs & Sons, Oh My!

54:03

54:03

Interview: Kim Gilson ~ Dimes & Signs & Sons, Oh My!

by Byte Sized Blessings

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

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9

Kim is a speaker (and boy howdy can you tell, incredible storyteller anyone?) an author, a teacher and a former band leader, (cue the bad ass band memories you all!) who is not afraid of sharing her powerful stories of magic and mystery! (and that's Mystery with a capital "M" as you will hear!) She tells a story of her husband, who, even though he had passed, still found ways to show up and remind her she is loved!

Storytelling Grief Healing Spirituality Resilience Public Speaking Family Miracles Career Transition Faith Journey Family Relationships

Meet your Teacher

Byte Sized Blessings

Santa Fe, NM, USA

Meet your Teacher

Byte Sized Blessings

Santa Fe, NM, USA

Transcript

Greetings everyone and welcome back to the very next episode of the podcast which happens to be a midweek miracle episode and my interview with Kim Gilson. Now I need to apologize to you all I somehow inadvertently uploaded two versions of the bite-sized episode for the last episode released. I'm not quite sure how that happened I'm checking into the software to see exactly how that transpired but yeah I apologize if it caused any confusion. Well I need to introduce you to my guest this episode and that is Kim Gilson. Pretty much from the second we started talking we could not stop. You know when you meet those people who just feel like soul sisters that you just know you can drop everything and go on over to their house and and they'll sit at a table or a counter and just hear you out or deeply listen or offer some really fabulous advice. Well Kim is that person. She has had a very interesting career. She's been a teacher, She's been a band leader, She tells some hilarious stories in this episode. I was laughing and laughing and side note I do confess an earlier crime in my life. It's very very bad from when I was in grade school and had the potential to become a musician. I hope you all don't hold it against me. All that to say this conversation was rip-roaring and hilarious and I could barely keep up with Kim. Now she does share several miracles in this episode and I'm gonna use that word with a capital M because they are very powerful and very very poignant. I'm gonna let Kim tell those stories. I don't want to spoil anything but I do want to say thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast. So now without further ado here's my episode with Kim Gilson. And my brother and I are talking and the whole time he's talking all I can think I'm just hearing blah blah blah because all I'm thinking is I've got to sell this house I cannot afford this house I've got to unload this house and what am I gonna do if I can't sell the house and then something falls out of the top of this bag of golf clubs and hits the ground and my brother goes what was that and I didn't he bends over and I said it's a dime isn't it and he said how'd you know. I am a 53 year old woman starting a new season of my life and I fully expect to be here until I am 100. In 2021 I retired from public education and I took a retirement gig as a curriculum director at a Christian daycare less than a mile from my house. I can go pick up a baby anytime I want to put him down when I'm tired of him like it is the best gig but but also I feel like God has called me to use the gifts he's given me for his kingdom and that is specifically teaching and speaking and writing and in January of 2021 he gave me this I had this interaction with him and I felt like it he was calling me to write a book and so it's taken two years to come out and I think that they're that God's hand is in that and so I am really trying at this stage of my life to walk out God's calling on my life and unlike my first career in education I don't know where this one is going I can't foresee five years or ten years down the line I don't know what the next step is gonna be so it's very much a walk in faith it's one day at a time I don't like marketing myself I was not raised to promote myself don't like that gotta do it if I want to get the message out there it's not just about selling books it really is about getting a message out there and and along the way you know I had this huge loss in my life in July of 2014 I lost my husband of 19 years to a blood clot and it was very unexpected it was the second day of a new job and so I have a huge testimony there but there was a prophetic words spoken over me that I would see his goodness in the land of the living and I have and I remarried this past March a gentleman that I had been dating for about eight years he is 15 years older than me and is such a partner in this new season of life and we have the most unusual setup I'd said I wasn't gonna get married again and he said we can keep both houses and I said okay that I can do so he has his house about 30 minutes from mine his office is 30 minutes on the other side of that he is 15 years older than me he has been single since the 90s I still have a son who was not completely out of the nest and so this works for us we're together about four nights a week and I think we might have cracked the marriage code finally someone's cracked the marriage code finally it had to happen eventually well I'm so curious what did you do in public education I started out as a band director I was a middle school and high school band director I did the color guard had never done color guard was a color guard instructor that was all kinds of exciting and then I had my first child and so band directing and parenting yeah so I became a math teacher cuz you know that's just the most logical next step and then I had an opportunity to get a virtual it was video conferencing master's degree in public school administration this was groundbreaking at the time you didn't have to drive this was like early 2000s you didn't have to drive to a college which was we didn't live geographically close to a college but they were setting up a video conference thing at the district that I worked in so I got a master's in public administration just to get a master's and then I actually got a job as an assistant principal and you talk about a stressful job like disciplining other people's children for a living I have never been so cussed out as I was over sending girls home for dress code and taking up cell phones oh yeah the biggest but shoe and I ever got was because I sent I called it a girl's mom about her top anyway yeah those were some fun days and then I went to central office to do data and accountability and testing and then the dream job July 1st 2014 was at an education service center where I would go out and be a consultant and train adults on the state assessment and accountability system I mean it doesn't get any sexier than that and that was the dream job and so I started at July 1st and then my husband died of the blood clot the next day and it was a three-hour round-trip commute each day but I mean again God's timing it was a new start and let me tell you the miles I spent on that highway I used to pray and cry and process and they were a huge part of my healing and it was such a good opportunity for me and my boys because I was the sole provider and that's where I learned that I really love standing in front of adults and teaching something and I can do it well I can take complicated material I can put it in a way they understand it and they laugh in the process and so after about five years of that I said I want to do this for the kingdom I don't want to do this for the state assessment and accountability system that nobody likes that I want to do something meaningful so I became a Zig Ziglar certified coach and speaker and got a job closer to home as the chief academic officer of a charter school district just in time to lead them through COVID yee-haw so that whole let's figure out how to learn online that was me and a team of about four people I mean yeah you talk about some fun times so by the fall of 2021 I was burnt toast and I really felt like God gave me permission I had a dream one night and I jumped out of an airplane and I coasted all the way to the ground and landed softly on the ground on this piece of cardboard and I woke up the next morning and I said I can do it I can retire he'll figure out the money I'll find another job to support my income but I felt like God was giving me permission to cry uncle because I had done hard things for so long and I just couldn't do it anymore I have to say that just as a little side note you were talking about your transition from band to math teacher and I've always thought music to be really mathematical so for you was that was that an easy transition it really was and my head is wired for numbers and I had great math teachers and in both you are taking something that is very abstract and trying to make it concrete for kids and it really was a natural transition for me yeah gosh you know I'm more of an English person like writing that kind of stuff the written word and I liked math in high school because at that time like all it was was memorizing rules and so you would memorize rules trig geometry etc as you climbed through the years and through the math and I loved that but then there was this point where it became a little less rule like and more theoretical and you kind of and I completely got lost I could not I could not do it it was like there were too many options and so it was overwhelming so anyone who is a math person I completely envy them because it is beyond me well I'll tell you I understand that because I could do chemistry give me equations I will balance them all day long physics I got through physics because I sat next to the guy who aced the SAT because it's theoretical I couldn't picture it I couldn't imagine like these vectors I'm like what I have no idea what a vector is I don't know and yeah so so he got me through the class I do have to say I love the word vector even though I don't know how to use it or what it is but I love the word and so I think that's all that counts so when you know when you were a kid did you think to yourself I want to be involved I want to be a teacher I kind of want to be involved in education or how did that happen yes and the crazy thing is neither of my parents are educators mom is she was a secretary they're both retired they're in their 80s still alive still kicking she was a secretary daddy was a computer programmer but I would go home from school every day and I would teach my stuffed animals what I had learned at school and I had the chalkboard right that flipped over and so it was like green on one side and black on the other and if I had a little desk and if I got spending money I would go to the store and I'd go straight to the office supply section and I would buy supplies for my desk and let me tell you if one of the girls ticked me off at school that day well I would go name one of my stuffed animals after her that night and I would take it out on them I had parent-teacher conferences for crying out loud I love every second of what you just said because when I was a kid our basement was pretty empty we had a pretty big basement in the house and it was pretty unfinished but I set up for some reason I set up this whole Italian restaurant down there you know I made up this and I loved I wrote out a bunch of menus and I pretended to wait on people at the tables and there's been a lot of I mean not a lot of study but a little bit of study you know because people are always wondering about vocation and work and job and how do I grow up and learn what I want to do and you know some psychologists have said well it's what you did for play as a child I mean that kind of is an inkling of what your heart wants to do because you're already doing it as a child and look I love customer service I've been a barista I've worked in restaurants off and on forever there is a limit to to me enjoying that job to be honest but but it is kind of fascinating I think these kind of these behaviors that we engage in as children can be a hint for what we want to do later in life I find that really fun that's that is so cool and you know it never really dawned on me until just now but the thing that I love I'm on the preaching team at my church and in anything that I blog about or talk about or I go speak about at church it's something God has taught me and it's very hard for me to learn something to be in a situation of learning without thinking about how would I teach this to somebody else like I'm that person if I learn something on the radio and I go to the post office somebody in the post office is gonna learn what I just learned because I have to share I'm that person and I guess I never really made that connection to being that kid and wanting to go home from school and teach my stuffed animals so man thank you for that that's yeah and let's just give thanks that the for career day in kindergarten I I went as a hula dancer and let's just give thanks to Jesus that that dream did not come true I love what kids come up with it's just like it's so fun I I often wish I still could access my kindergarten self so that every day was kind of bright and shiny and full of hope and that I didn't understand the news when it came on the radio what did you want to be in kindergarten oh my gosh well I mean it's funny I never went to kindergarten because I was we moved overseas and so my dad was walking me to school the first day and he said do you want to go to kindergarten or first grade and I think I was four and I kindergarten sounded scary because it was this long word that he didn't understand and first grade sounded like number one winning and so I just was like I'll go to first grade and so he's like okay and then they just put me in first grade and I was I was probably five anyway I do remember this moment as an educator you might find this interesting so here I am in this class they're trying to teach us how to read we have these books Jack and Jill right and I remember I still remember my brain the second that I understood that these words were making a story and making sense about Jack and Jill going up the hill I mean I can still feel the revelation that like went through my brain and my body yes when I was oh my gosh these are all going together and it makes a story and I flipped the page and there's I mean I remember that moment it still stays with me in my body and I think you know it's so funny it's Jack and Jill but when you're that little and that small and think something clicks for you like that it's like you remember it forever that's awesome Oh get goosebumps the lightbulb moments that's why people teach for those moments right there yeah well let me ask you what was one of your favorite moments teaching oh my goodness um okay so here's a good one so I was a band director and at the high school I had the bottom band okay they were not the strongest musicians I was the newest teacher and so I had you know the bottom band and we went to Florida for a contest now my band was supposed to be exhibit only like we weren't supposed to be judged and rated but we're at Disney World and they have this big announcement thing where they're announcing the winners they announced that my band won their division okay we're going nuts we're going nuts and the whole time I'm like really I didn't even think we could win cuz we're exhibiting but my kids were so excited that they what we got like this really big honking trophy you know okay well come to find out the people running the contest had made a mistake and the next morning they're calling the hotel to the head band director to try to get him to return the trophy and the people at the hotel are trying to get him and you're chasing him and he is running to the buses because we're not telling our kids we didn't win and we're not taking the trophy back and they never found out they thought they really won that contest and nobody was taking it away from him oh my god that's amazing I can just imagine this man with this huge trophy like booking it to the bus no one is taking this trophy from me I can totally visualize that that's amazing oh my gosh that's what a beautiful story too for those kids they were not used to winning you know yeah yeah and they had come so far I mean they really had come a long way so well you know my second question always is in the podcast it's did you grow up in a religious household and and did that evolve or change over your life I'd love to hear about it yeah so I I do not have this dramatic John Wesley salvation moment okay I don't have that story I grew up in a house that that loved Jesus and I had my mom and dad and my brother and sister were 10 and 12 when I was born so I was a little princess you know and I grew up in a Protestant Church knowing that Jesus loved me and knowing that my family loved me and I knew that that church was an important place and I loved God and I loved I've got the father I understood that I had a loving earthly father I understood a loving Heavenly Father God the Son I understood that I understood Jesus now in my denomination they had this third thing and they didn't talk about him very much and it was God the Holy Spirit only they didn't even call him the Holy Spirit they call him the Holy Ghost now everything I knew about ghosts I had learned from watching Scooby-Doo and I wanted nothing to do with anything called a ghost especially a Holy Ghost so I decided I'm good two thirds of the Trinity bases I am so good with the two-thirds of the Trinity and it was that way for a long time and then over the course of life you know you you go to different churches and you see different things and we were part of a church plant that failed and we went looking for a new church we did not want a big church and we wanted a church that could pay its bills those were the two the two things and we walk into this church in our town and we're like yeah this is great we love this and my husband my first husband he's like yeah this is it we're going back okay well I didn't know it was the Charismatic Church if they had told me it was the Charismatic Church I wouldn't have gone to the Charismatic Church because I made fun of Charismatics they did weird things well wouldn't you know it it's not too long before I'm doing the weird things and I'm I'm speaking in tongues and I'm raising my hand in prayer you know and then I got baptized in the Holy Spirit and and it was like this new dimension opened up and what did it for me was seeing these people that knew God at a level that I didn't and I remember saying you know two-thirds of the Trinity is great but there there is more of God and based on what I've seen it do in these people's lives I want all that I can get and so it was opening my mind and opening my heart to that and so my story of God and religion in my life has been very much based on relationship it is not based on on the actual religious practices and it's been peeling back the layers there's always more to learn about God and I love that what I love is that you brought in scooby-doo I had a nightmare and I will tell people our age I'll say yeah you know there was this one episode that gave me nightmares I still remember the nightmare I was five years old and my mom said no more scooby-doo and every time I asked people they go was it the airport episode and I said yes it was the airport episode with the astronaut yes that was terrifying yes yuck yes well what I really love about it it is it also like you're you're the Holy Ghost thing brought up that the peanuts Halloween where I think someone puts just a sheet to be a ghost but it's full of holes yes so that I was thinking oh my gosh you said scooby-doo and I went to peanuts with I think it's I think I'm pretty sure that happened yeah yeah so I love that we equated that but what what a funny story because again you know your I love that you bring in your childhood right and how your child self heard or understood this in relation to the world that you lived in which was happened to have scooby-doo and that horrifying astronaut but and so you're like okay well I'm I'm okay with two-thirds I'm okay with two-thirds and you felt really good about that and then suddenly you find yourself you're looking you find yourself in this charismatic church not really knowing it's a charismatic church but then all of a sudden all these things open up for you and think your relationship changes and that it's no longer the scary astronaut anymore it's something 10, 000 times better that really resonated with you and it's so interesting that you find yourself in this place that if you would have known it was a charismatic church you would have said no way yeah I remember saying okay look we're gonna go find a new church but we are not going to one of those churches where they speak in tongues and raise their hands when they sing we're not doing that next thing you know never tell God never never never do that never he has the best sense of humor and he laughs with me at myself when I say there's something I'm never going to do you know like there's maybe there's a fashion and you say oh yeah I'm never gonna wear that and then the next thing you know usually about the time everybody else has gotten tired of it I jump on board and oh yeah I said I was never gonna wear that but here I am yeah I'm usually a late adopter but but we just laugh together as I embrace things that I say I will never do yeah I have a it's interesting I wrote this I'm also a screenwriter and I have this animated series on YouTube called murder of two and it's about two crows that sit on a line and kind of observe humanity and comment on what's going on and each episode is like two to three minutes long so they're not long episodes but it was only after writing the first season that I realized you know I reflected on it and I thought to myself you know because it's a comedy but it engages with some really harsh realities in this world so the first episode was my response to George Floyd's murder and and so it's it's interesting weaving comedy in that together but then I realized you know it was really my subconscious kind of wrestling with what God or spirit thinks when they look down at us observing us you know and just saying you know oh dear oh dear and what are they up to today let's turn on the earth TV and see what's going on down there yeah I'm sure we give no end of entertainment and amusement and and I think I know I am guilty sometimes of taking myself and life too seriously and I have to stop and say okay wait a second you know what lighten up like really it's it's not that big of a deal 50 years from now nobody's gonna be talking about this so just laugh at it and move on yeah absolutely I wanted to ask just because I'm curious so now do you obviously I think to be a band leader you played an instrument or you were interested in music so then do you do you go and get a degree in education but then they hire you for band because you play an instrument or do you I mean how does that work so I have a bachelor's of music education and I think it was actually an education degree with an emphasis in music but it was a BME and so I had to take the education classes and I had to take the music classes and I what part of the country are you from I grew up in a small town kind of outside of Chicago okay so you may have heard of the University of North Texas UNT it's one of the best music schools in the country okay well that's where I went it was an hour away from my hometown at the time and I joked that I was too normal to fit into the music classes and too weird and quirky to fit into the education classes like I yeah I kind of didn't fit in either one but yeah you take classes in both and then you have to go student teach in your field so and I played clarinet okay um you know I was part of the generation I don't know if they made you do this but in fourth grade or fifth grade they forced us to learn recorder and I remember maybe it was sixth grade in my school and I remember you know being younger and looking at the older grades as they started taking up the recorder and I thought to myself I hope the recorder doesn't exist by the time I get there but of course it did and it was just so awful and I'm not I cannot play an instrument at all and it was a lot of stress trying to learn this thing and you know there are all these weird creepy plastic recorders that they were just passing around so gross anyway I was grateful when that I'm gonna confess something to you too but I was grateful when the recorder thing ended but then like the high school came in or maybe it was the junior high and they gave everyone in the at my grade this special music test it was like answer all these questions to find our capability any sort of musical capability whatsoever and I discovered just because I hated taking the test I was it was like a carbon copy you know it was a carbon copy but I realized that like on the third or fourth page all the answers had already been marked because that was the way the test had been designed because I think I peeled apart the test number and I was like oh here's all the answers so I just marked all the correct answers to like get it over with and to not have to take the stupid test and then they came back at me and they're like you are a genius you're like okay you've got to make an episode of and first of all I have to find your crows videos I can't wait but you've got to make an episode of your crows about this I mean honestly it was terrible and I couldn't confess that I had totally cheated so I kind of just sidestepped it and ignored it when people would ask me adults would ask me about what so what instrument are you gonna take up huh what's going on here I was like oh I'm not really into it but thanks so yeah that's that's one of my darkest secrets that I've I've held since I was in grade school but again you know because I don't know I guess music and reading music like I was in choir so I can read music but like playing an instrument is a whole other thing and it's uh it's you know like math which I'm not like great at and so maybe that's why I'm not great at playing an instrument but I think also because it involves you know the brain and then you're looking at the sheet music and then you have to translate that into actual physical movements to get something to work and my body just doesn't work like that so that's interesting because I will tell you I could play I was a great clarinet player I was an all-state clarinet player and you know your ten fingers work together to make one note I also had to learn piano and the idea that my ten fingers are doing separate things and working against each other I couldn't do that I mean I learned just enough to pass the little classes that I had to have but yeah my brain does not do that and I am an algebraic linear thinker I am NOT a geometric spatial person like is it a foot is it a hundred feet man I don't know don't tell me to turn left in 50 yards you're gonna have to tell me to turn left at the Taco Bell I have no idea spatially how much that is and so I don't know if that's the connection but yeah I could not do the my hands are going in opposite directions and my fingers are each doing different things like my brain does not do that but yeah I could rock that clarinet I have to tell you that I was in swing choir in high school and so for the first three years I was in treble airs which was the girls group and it was a pretty safe group you know we were kind of like the premier choirs rejects and that's fine like we did okay we were not like the great but the big thing everybody wanted being was swing singers which was you know the girls and guys together and they would travel everywhere and compete and all these things and so I was kind of a sound person for the first three years and then finally I graduated senior year to be in swing singers but almost you know the singing and the dancing together was somewhat confounding to me I mean I don't know what that's all about but I just can't do it okay so I I've my husband now like we tried to go do dance lessons like ballroom kind of I can't like I just can't I could do marching band like I was really good at marching band I was a drum major I could conduct one time signature with my hands and do another one with my feet because it was mathematical I could do the math I had beat and I could do math so I got the odd beats were on the left foot and even feets were on the even beats were on the right feet and I could I I knew that it was an eight to five grid and yeah I could do that because of the math but I cannot swing dance or do any type of ballroom dancing where it's I'm not coordinated enough and I have beat it's not a lack of beat I have lack of beat I will I have that I was gonna tell you that in my school the I always felt you know because the band would come out during the football games and people would be in the stands cheering and screaming and having the best time and celebrating the band and the color guard and I always felt like the band was the low-key super cool kids in the school and nobody really wanted to acknowledge it I always felt that okay so you know in Texas high school football is king and marching band is right up there with it now in my high school growing up we bumped up a division my sophomore year so we went from 4a to 5a and it took a while like like the high school now 30-something years later you know goes to state for football but back then they I remember it was my junior or senior year they sold those foam fingers that said we're number one well it meant that year we won one game so the football team was not any good but the band would go to state so we really were yeah we were kind of yeah we were band nerds but nobody made fun of us too bad I think people I don't know I don't know if it's this is a case but people lose sight of the band and in the music programs and how just incredible they are and how powerful because they you know just like a football game and can rouse people's spirits and get them excited music can too you know any kind of music especially if you have I don't know 80 kids out on in the middle of a football pitch playing the school song or what the state song or whatever whatever that looks like I mean I don't know I especially in in Illinois you know at that time when it's football season that it's the fall air and it's crisp and you can feel those nights are getting pretty cool and it's it's just gorgeous you know and so it's like football season is really special in that way because you can feel winter approaching you can feel the year drawing to an end and you're out at night under these lights like celebrating the kids and everyone who's succeeding that year and doing incredible and whatever anyway I could talk to you for like 20 years I just want you to know that because you're so fun I feel like if we were neighbors I would be over at using an excuse for an egg every other day and you'd be like just buy a dozen eggs okay no no I I would have your eggs for you I would buy extra yes we would probably share chickens there you go well I would love to ask the main question of the podcast which is I would love for you to share a story or stories more than one if you feel like it of something magical that's happened in your life something mysterious or miraculous something that changed your life I've had everything from ghosts to people who've had visions that led them from being lost in the woods to mothers who've changed lives gosh I've I've had so many different kinds of stories dreams that came true so whatever you feel like sharing I would love to hear everything okay so let me give you one this is a big one and this was shortly after I was baptized in the Holy Spirit so the church plant had folded we went to the new charismatic Church in August of 2013 the next spring we joined the church and I baptized in the Holy Spirit and I have this dream one night and in the dream I am going down a road with my boss at the time Judy and Judy's driving and I'm a passenger in the car and the car makes a wide right turn and I fly out the passenger window over the car and I land in a calm body of water now next part of the dream I'm driving a car and I've got a passenger and I don't know who the passenger is but I make a wide left turn and the passenger flies out the passenger window so I knew this dream meant something I didn't know what but I knew it meant something so I take it to my preacher and he says let me pray over and he calls me a couple days later emails me says I need you to call me I've got an interpretation of your dream and he says okay this is a warning dream something bad is gonna happen with you and your boss and I said yeah I don't think so okay that's just not it I know that's not it I said I was hoping you were going to tell me that I was gonna get a new job because I'm burnt out on the one I've got and I had just kind of reached a point where it wasn't as fun as it used to be and that spring I told my husband my dream job is to work at the region 10 Education Service Center someday but it's in Richardson it's too far away you know maybe when the kids are older we could move up there and that job hardly ever comes open so you know like there's like one one person at the center does that job well a couple months later the phone rings and this lady says hey Kim it's Jana at region 10 I'm leaving you want my job we tried to fill it internally and we can't and they asked me who in the field was good and I I said you're good do you want it I'm like this is not how this I'm like but I cannot believe this so I said well let me talk to my husband and he said okay this job is perfect for you I don't want to hear about the commute I don't care about the money you're taking this job so this is the job I started July 1st and he died the next day of a blood clot now let's go back to the dream so when I got the job I was like hey I think the dream was right I think this is the first part of the dream I said I wanted a new job I thought this what the first part of the dream was this is it I wonder what the second part of the dream is and then when he died like it didn't hit me at first I don't know when it hit me because I didn't know what was going on I went that was the second part of my dream I know who the passenger was that flew out the window and you know you go back and I'm like the Pat my preacher thought it was a warning dream I don't think it was a warning dream there was nothing about that dream designed to stop anything from happening and what it taught me was a couple of things number one we all have an expiration date we're all going to leave this earth and nobody is guaranteed anything and number two it gave me great comfort because I felt like God was showing me these things are going to happen and I'm giving you this dream so you know when they do that I've seen it coming and I was with you the whole way and we could go back over the course of the prior year and show you things that had prepared the boys and I for the loss of Paul he was away during the week staying on the north side of Dallas working hail claims after a huge hailstorm and he would come home on the weekend and we said oh I was joking I'm like oh yeah I'm a single mom this week we were in training you know and just different things that had taken place and so that was such a big thing for me like God not only I saw what was coming but he wanted to communicate with me so I would know he was with me and then there is a book I read many many years ago by an author named Laurie Beth Jones I've got to find this woman I hope she's still alive I've got to find her because I tell the story frequently in her book Jesus as life coach she talks about coming up with a symbol this is gonna be a symbol between you and God and you agree on the symbol hers was the ladybug and she had some crazy stories of ladybugs traveling in a hotel kind of depressed kind of down homesick opens up her suitcase and there's a ladybug in her suitcase okay so I'm like all right I'm gonna pick dimes I don't know why I just picked a dime all right they're nice little silver you know and and I've had some good dime stories but you got to hear this one so when Paul died we had a 3200 square foot house on an acre that was not easy to get to and one of the I couldn't afford it it was too much and I needed out of that house and the boys wanted out of that house we wanted a fresh break so I broke all the rules of widowhood you know don't make any big decisions the first year yeah no they were out the window the first week so I'm like we got to sell the house so family jumps in they get the house ready and we had our first showing on a Saturday morning and I come back you know you leave for the showing and you come back and and then my brother shows up and so we're standing in the garage talking the garage is pretty much emptied out they'd taken a bunch of stuff to a storage building and there is this bag of golf clubs standing in the middle of the garage and my brother and I are standing to the side of it we are not touching it it's not like we're leaning on it's just there and my brother and I are talking and the whole time he's talking all I can think I'm just hearing blah blah blah because all I'm thinking is I've got to sell this house I cannot afford this house I've got to unload this house what am I gonna do if I can't sell the house and then something falls out of the top of this bag of golf clubs and hits the ground and my brother goes what was that and I didn't he bends over and I said it's a dime isn't it and he said how'd you know not only was it a dime it was a 1957 dime which means it's got that higher silver content it's beautiful they they were more silver and less gray and it makes a different sound when it hits the ground I still have the dime I want you to know that was Saturday morning Monday morning I get a call from my realtor the people that looked at the house Saturday morning made me a full price offer I was dating the man that I wound up marrying there's a 15 year age difference and I was praying about this like is you know I'm kind of having a trouble a problem with the age difference and I'm praying about I get out of the car I look down there's a dime on the ground I picked it up and for some reason I went to look at the year on the dime it was scratched out I mean just crazy story I have the jars of these dimes and I don't keep them all and I tried to put them in a book at one point but yeah I God is real and he loves us and he loves communicating with us he loves talking to us yeah I I often tell people in my daily life but also on this podcast that you know the universe God spirit whatever you want to call it it's just waiting for relationship and it's waiting for you to initiate it and say I'm ready I'm open what what kind of conversation do you want to have how do we begin this and it's almost like it's waiting with bated breath waiting I'm waiting and patience is a virtue I would say and one that God is very very good at also I think you know God has to have a sense of humor I think often with me because I'm I'm so impatient and I'm also very salty and so and I also have told many people that I feel like God is a nag and a monkey on my back and so I always I just envision this thing where God is like careful guys that one over there is a little salty so you gotta be patient with that one I mean she'll complain for a few days but then she'll get around to it so but I do think that that is first of all I have to tell you I was getting goosebumps when you were telling me that story about the dime coming out of the golf bag and the sound and both you and your brother thinking what what was are your brother saying what was that but you already kind of knew I think that's so astonishing but I I think it does absolutely ratify or emphasize that once you open yourself up and you kind of I would say make a contract or agree to begin relationship or conversation that all bets are off and you never know what kind of magic is gonna surface or what kind of miracles gonna happen or or even I mean honestly what kind of conversation you're gonna have of course you have no idea what the conversation is gonna look like but it's exciting because that means every day when you wake up you never know what kind of adventure you're going to have amen and just to just to be open to it just to say hey yeah God how are you gonna show up today and I think something that's very important is to realize that God doesn't necessarily talk to us all the same way and that's okay and we need to be very careful about comparing our experience to somebody else's and feeling less than it's okay you know I I've had dreams I know somebody else who doesn't get dreams she gets visions I think a vision would be really cool but I get dreams and I I hear things so yeah I but like like just the symbol thing I mean that was that was so cool and just being open and willing willing to partner willing to co-labor willing to listen willing to talk I'm curious how you would feel about this kind of question slash statement do you think that if you have a more childlike heart or have a great imagination or or have been kind of fascinated by the arts like you with music me with my horrible dancing and swing choir and my writing and what-have-you do you think those kind of natures of people are more readily disposed to having a conversation with God oh that is a great question I kind of think of some of the people I I would be curious and I don't know this but I would be very curious if you surveyed people who are committed atheists about their professions you know are more people who are atheists also scientists or also mathematicians you know they're the flip side of that is people who really study science really see the the beauty of God and the fact that there has to be another hand in here there is a man at our church who is very much the professor he is very much that intellectual science and like he's all about the time frames and the Bible and the geology and the dinosaurs look I don't care I like I really I just don't care he does and and he is all about that and he is every bit as a committed Christian as anybody but I I would typically think that maybe it is a little harder for them but maybe they need more concrete proof maybe I don't know I love dinosaurs I want everyone to know that just to put that out there so we have this thing and it's not far from where I live and it's called dinosaur Valley you got to come down sometime like come down and we'll go I'll take you okay it's famous it's famous yes yes you can go walk in the footsteps of the dinosaurs yeah you come down we'll go okay deal deal deal um well would you like to share any other stories I always ask as a last question okay let me think what oh yes I want to tell you so somebody recently asked me like what what's something I'm very very proud of and so the night that my husband died I laid in bed with my boys they were 13 and 15 at the time and I said I can't let this be the last good day that they've had we we have to fight our way back to joy and if I want them to be happy again I have to show them that it's okay and I have to show them out and we have a very very good relationship and I'm so proud of that relationship but I gotta tell you when I got married again and we just I wanted a church wedding I wanted to celebrate what God had done in our lives we each had one listen we each had one attendant and I never got on Pinterest and we only had a cake-and-punch reception it can be done people it can be done but cake-and-punch reception and my youngest son gets up and he gives the speech that put everybody in the room in tears and he talked about how he didn't realize until recently how hard it was for me and the sacrifices that I made and and what I did and how hard I worked to give them the lives that they have today and the example I set for them and like I'm a puddle of ooze like my mouth is open you know this and so well-spoken 23 year old young man and then my second my older son gets up there and I'm like I can't handle another one of these I don't know what I'm gonna do and my second son grabs the mic and he goes Don thanks for taking our mom antique shopping so we don't have to and the whole church bursts into laughter and I'm like yes yes these are my boys this is what I fought for this is what we fought for this is seeing his goodness on the land of the living their dad would be so proud the gratitude the appreciation the love the faith the resilience and they've still got their sense of humor about them and it was just about will that will go down as one of the proudest moments in my life I'm sure someday a grandchild will top it but for right now that's up there all right everyone you have just listened to the very next episode of the podcast and my interview with Kim Gilson I hope you found her just as enchanting as I do and can rest a little easier tonight knowing that there are beautiful humans out in the world creating laughter creating memories and creating a better world for all of us to live in now all of you I just want to say thanks for listening and if you can find it in your hearts to do so please do consider leaving a rating or writing a little review you have no idea really no idea how much those ratings and reviews help other people find this little labor of love of mine thank you for listening and here's my one request be like Kim be unapologetic be one of those people that brings beauty into the world that is shameless about creating good for others creating laughter for others show up every day even though we all know we all know the struggle is real we all know this world can be a hard place a difficult place a place that will break your heart but show up like Kim believing in the goodness of other people and believing in the goodness of this world and pretty soon I'm hoping and of course I'm guessing that this world will actually turn out to be a lot more beautiful and a lot more incredible just because you yes you you wished for it