Ep. 1573 – The Good News with Angie Austin – Jim Stovall, Companionship & Happiness

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Thank you so much for having me. Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.

SPEAKER 08 : 0:40

Hello there, it’s Angie Austin and also Grace Fox. And we are doing the good news with Angie Austin and talking about her book, Fresh Hope for Today, Devotions for Joy on the Journey. And today we’re focusing on Let It Go. But I thought I’d talk a little about Christmas. Hello there, Grace Fox. Hi, so good to be back with you. Well, great to be with you, too. I love the story, and I will just tell it one more time because I think it’s so sweet. I think this is the third time we’ve told it, but I just love the story about when your kids were little and you’d do things for people at Christmas, your neighbors and everything, which I know you do now. Part of living in, you know, Grace, as many of you know, lives on a boat. And so in the marina, she likes to kind of bring things together and maybe host, like, you know, coffee and cinnamon rolls or just have that, like, neighborhood feel. And in your old neighborhood when you were a kid, there was this crotchety old couple that you were all kind of afraid of. And I just love this story. So will you tell us the gingerbread man story again?

SPEAKER 06 : 1:41

Sure, yeah. That’s when my kids were smaller. I think my youngest one was probably kindergarten age, first grade, something like that. The oldest would have been about third or fourth grade then. And we decided that we were going to bake cookies for our neighbors and put them in little bags. Then we would put a tag on and deliver them. So when we delivered them, we sang We Wish You a Merry Christmas at the door. And the neighbors loved it. But at the top of the road, beginning of this little dirt road that we lived on, was a couple who, he especially, was not very friendly. And so people just stared clear of them. He made it clear he did not want people stopping by or trying to reach out. So we respected that. But that day we thought we’re going to break the rules and we’re going to take cookies to these people too. So we walked up their driveway and rang the doorbell but only the missus came to the door. So we handed her the cookies and we sang a little song and she took the cookies and said thank you, closed the door. So we turned around and started walking away and then suddenly she called us. So we turned around and she motioned for us to come back and When we did, she got tears in her eyes and she said, thank you for this. You will never know how much this meant. Then she told us that her husband had died two weeks before. Nobody, nobody on the road really was aware of it because they didn’t have any friends. It wasn’t in the newspaper. There was no notification public. This guy had died. There was no way that we could have known. And so here we did this just because we wanted to be kind. and did not realize the impact that that little cookie gift would have on a neighbor whose heart was broken. And so that, to me, was such a lesson in just random acts of kindness. They might not seem like anything big, but because we don’t know where people’s hearts are, we don’t know what their circumstances behind the scenes are, we just don’t understand sometimes the

SPEAKER 08 : 3:55

positive impact that a little random act of kindness can have yeah i i that affected me too just that story and that i would we have we have a guy like that in our neighborhood and maybe i think i met him five years into living here and i think we’ve lived here seven years now and um Yeah, he just isn’t, he doesn’t really want to have friends and he doesn’t want to be friendly. But his wife is actually kind of friendly, but I think people avoid them because of him. And I always wave at her when she’s walking her dog. She has lots of dogs. And, you know, in her case and both of the wives, they may actually be friendly people, but… If your spouse is someone that keeps others at bay, you know, you’re kind of trapped in their world, you know, to some degree. And so it’s just interesting that she called you back to let you know. And I don’t know, I just love that story. And I can see how those little lessons can really have an impact too, because, um, you know, when someone shows you with their tears and their voice and, you know, they’re trembling. Like I just was at an event where I had to tell a reason how I met this particular lady. And she, to me, is like the kind of mom that I would pick if I could pick a mom. And I’m not saying I don’t love my mom, but I was the mom. You know, I definitely made sure the phone bill was paid. I made the responsible decisions. I, you know, helped her buy a house. I was the mom. And so if I could have picked a mom that was more mom-ish, I would have picked this particular woman. And so we had this luncheon for Arlene and one of the ladies was like, she was so funny, she was like, she goes, what do I do for a lady who has everything? What do you give lady who has everything? I thought I give lady… a party for her friends and so she had this really nice gathering of all her best friends which was a huge group and believe me she had to cut a lot of people out because she’s so beloved for her philanthropy and she just you know is always giving and she’s on committees and she’s raising money and she’s donating money and she’s doing the luncheons and then she does this funny thing where she uh donates a catered dinner in her home where she pays for the caterers and then her home is like it’s like something frank sinatra would live in like you think the rat pack would live there like white columns in the front and a giant fountain a circular driveway and they’ve got you know the valets to take your car and the pool in the pool house and the tennis courts it’s amazing so she has this big dinner right and then she’ll try to coax us into being french maids She’s like, you know, I donated another dinner and I raised $10,000 for whatever charity. And I was wondering, it’s served by French maids. I’m like, girl, I love you, but I’m not wearing a French maid costume for you. I’ll wear like a tux. But anyway, we had to say how we met her, right? And then I couldn’t contain my emotion to explain how… she’s included me because she’s my mom’s age so she’s always included me in her very wealthy circle of friends and so you know here i was at the time maybe in my 20s when i first met her and her friends were you know old older very wealthy you know very fancy homes and you know i can’t remember then if i’d even bought my house yet you know she didn’t care what i had or who i was or whatever i would mc a lot of their events because i was on tv then And so they’d be like, oh, we’ll have Angie be the emcee of the event. So I donate my time or whatever. So anyway, when I start telling them what she means to me, like I can’t contain my emotion. And I think when like that woman, when she got the tears in her eyes, when you’ve really touched someone’s heart and you hear that emotion that you don’t hear often in life that people and then they’re embarrassed, right? We’re embarrassed when we let our emotion come through. But I looked around at all the other ladies at the table and it was like, I’d say 25 of us, at least they’re all crying with me, you know? And so they were touched that I had been so touched by this woman and her kindness, but that kind of emotion is like infectious or it moves people. Cause I don’t think we hear it that often.

SPEAKER 06 : 7:52

I think we tend to, um, equate that kind of emotion displayed with weakness yes and that that’s not accurate that’s not accurate at all like if our hearts are overflowing with um you know we’ve been touched for some reason like it’s really ministered to us deeply it’s okay to cry it’s okay to to show that we’ve been touched we don’t have to stifle that it’s not weakness it is not weakness it’s just our

SPEAKER 08 : 8:30

You know, I was talking to the coaches that were going, not at the time, going to offer, they did offer my daughter a scholarship. And it’s a very strong Christian school where they train a lot of pastors. And the assistant coach who found her, he is actually a pastor and a dad. And we were talking about faith. And then I was sharing a little bit of my testimony with them. And of course, we’re on like some kind of a Zoom call and it’s just me and the coaches because she’d had an initial call and then we had to discuss some other, you know, little finalities or this, that, and the other. And then I got emotional saying that. I’m like, oh, I’m so embarrassed. But I… But being people of faith themselves, like they didn’t judge me in that way that we normally like some men would be embarrassed or whatever. But and I’m like, oh, my gosh, my daughter would kill me if she knew that, you know, I just got teary eyed talking about my faith with them. But since it’s a Christian school and that’s they actually vet you. That the players like have an initial call where they just see like, are you saying you’re a Christian to get into the school? Because this is an important aspect of our school. So if you’re not in, if you can’t buy into our faith, you know, then then it it might not work for you or for them for that matter, you know. So anyway, that was interesting. My husband would have killed me too. Okay, so we’ve got Christmas upon us and we’re talking about Let It Go. So what in your devotion, what are you talking about in your Let It Go devotion?

SPEAKER 06 : 9:51

In this little devotion, it’s about giving all your worries and cares to God for he cares about you. 1 Peter 5, 7. There’s a friend of mine who was speaking at, or she was listening at this point, at a women’s conference. Usually she speaks, but this time she was in the audience and She was saying she’s wearing this smile on the outside, but it was covering up hurt on the inside. And she just felt like everything was spinning out of control in her life. But she listened as the speaker talked about a toddler receiving a helium balloon with a string attached. And when that toddler was told to hold the string tight so it doesn’t fly away, he did the opposite. He just let it go. So the mom said, well, why’d you do that? And he said, I didn’t let it go, mommy. I gave it to Jesus. And it’s like, it is beautiful. And I think, you know, we could tie this one into Christmas because when we get together with people for Christmas, family and friends, that’s going to happen because there’s tense relationships. Let’s just put it out there. There are tense relationships in families and groups. And so we can either hang on to that string real tight or we can let it go. When somebody says or does something that we find offensive, let it go and just give it to Jesus. We don’t have to hang on to it. And it’s our choice if we do. If we do, it just isn’t going to go well in our own self, in our own hearts, because then we start to brew on it. We know how that works. Right, Angie? We start to brew on it. We stew on it. We regurgitate it over and over in our heads until it’s a big, big deal. But we don’t have to live like that. So… maybe that would be the challenge. So this Christmas when stuff happens that we don’t anticipate, whether it’s a huge disappointment because a storm blows in and now family can’t come home or we can’t get to where we’re supposed to be. All of our plans are shot because of weather related stuff or airline stuff or whatever. Or somebody says that thing that hurt, let those disappointments go. Let that hurt go. Give it to Jesus and take that big breath and just

SPEAKER 08 : 12:06

You know, I just recently interviewed Dan Lyons, and he is an agreement-like expert or art of conflict expert. And he wrote this book, which isn’t really like, you know, the title that you and I would go for, but it’s STFU, The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World. And what was funny about his, you know, basically shut up book was that he said, you know, silence is powerful. You don’t always have to respond with something or. And he also said that an interesting way for you to make them not feel so challenged is, you know, well, thank you for sharing that. That’s, you know, you know, I’ve never thought of it that way. Thank you. And then he said, also, you can ask them, you know, oh, that’s it. Why do you say that? Or why do you think that? That’s interesting. How come you said that? Like, why do you think that way? You know, are you just kind of being quizzical more? And he said, you might learn something. It’s not necessarily going to change your mind. But he said, being the smartest guy in the room, well, and I remind him, being the smartest guy in the room makes you generally smarter. the most despised person in the room. Like you think, oh, I’m going to win this argument. I’m going to think I’m so smart. No, they’re going to think you’re a jerk because you’re shoving your views down someone’s throat and trying to get them to acquiesce. And that doesn’t make you strong. It makes you a bully. And so, but I loved the silence, you know, and he said you should listen two times as much as you talk, which I’ll bet you do. I could see that being one of your gifts to not be the one that has to talk the most in the room, even though you and I are both speakers per se, you know.

SPEAKER 06 : 13:42

Oh, I have to work at keeping my mouth shut too, Angie. I have to think sometimes, wait a minute. There’s this thing happening in my head in response to what I just heard. If I open my mouth and let that thing out, is it really going to be helpful to this relationship or is it going to hurt?

SPEAKER 07 : 14:01

Oh, my goodness. We’re out of time. Grace, you are so funny. I have to work on it too, Angie. The book is Fresh Hope for Today, GraceFox.com. Thank you, Grace.

SPEAKER 06 : 14:11

You bet. Talk to you again.

SPEAKER 04 : 14:30

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SPEAKER 08 : 15:35

Hey, it’s almost Christmas time. I want to talk about some Christmas traditions and memories this year. That’s always fun to do. I’m excited because I’m going to get to spend Christmas with my mom, kind of unexpected, and my brother. We were going to head to Florida or California, but then we looked at the forecast in Phoenix, near where they are, they’re in Tucson, and thought, boy, that looks like a really nice, warm, fun place to go. And we knew that Gran Gran would get a kick out of that. My brother’s like… An amazing cook. I mean, he is like chef quality food. He’s such a good cook. And so that will be wonderful. Absolutely wonderful to get to enjoy, you know, warm weather, which I’m ready for the sunshine and family as well. I wanted to talk about some Christmas traditions. I still remember when we would make the kids, and I think I’ve told you this, we’d make the kids wait at the top of the stairs Christmas morning, and they’d have to wait up there until everybody was awake. So we had to get grand-grand up, and then they could run down and start ripping. But they’d just sit at the top of the stairs, just chomping at the bit to get downstairs. And I’ve talked about some of our Christmas traditions, but I found some really cool ones that I thought… You might get a kick out of it. And we can still do them even though it’s so close to Christmas. I just ordered some construction paper and doilies that I’m going to pick up today. And we’re going to cut out snowflakes and put them on the windows. And the kids are all in high school, so they still like to do a lot of this stuff. I don’t know if my son will do the snowflakes, but I know the girls… We’ll do that. And then going out and looking at Christmas lights, we still do that with some, you know, hot cocoa in the car and driving around. I think that’s a lot of fun. And then we often do like a really nice, you know, like going out for dinner, doing kind of a nice Christmas, you know, dinner, not necessarily on Christmas Day per se, but just going out together as a family. And we even planned a couple of things for Christmas weekend, ice skating. And my husband’s a really good ice skater because he used to play hockey. Ice skating and then a movie that’s coming out. Making Christmas cookies. My youngest daughter already did that. Sometimes going out for like a holiday market. Things like that over this last weekend. That might be fun. And ice skating you can do. There’s lots of places around Denver you can find to do that. And then making like really cool hot chocolates. Maybe you’re going to watch a show together at night. We have that, you know, Keurig thing or whatever you put the little pods in, but we always add like maybe fancy marshmallows or an extra glob of chocolate. There’s this Mexican hot chocolate that’s like your grandma’s Mexican hot chocolate and it’s got a big chunk of chocolate. And then the cinnamon that’s added, which is traditional. So that’s pretty yummy. A lot of people do like a, you know, this is what you would have to do earlier, but you might think about for next year, a do-it-yourself advent calendar. Or my kids just used to like them, but if there was chocolate in them, I think it was Hope. I don’t know for sure, but she opened up a whole bunch of the windows and ate all the chocolate out. So that didn’t work very well. Um, I’m going to have the kids like make something, each make something for Christmas dinner. We’re going to do filet mignon, but then I think I’ll have one of them do the salad. One of them do the dessert. Maybe we’ll do a yummy side, like some really good mashed potatoes or something, but making them each responsible for something. It kind of gives them some pride in the meal as well. I do this one. This is on the list of cool Christmas traditions. Filling the tree with special ornaments. Every year I get the kids an ornament and then I put on the back of it the date that I got the ornament. And that’s kind of fun because then they’ve got their name on it and then when they grow up they have a whole bunch of ornaments that they can take with them. we’re going to um christmas eve service but if uh and some people go christmas day um a really neat christmas breakfast my mom would do that oftentimes like french toast or you know eggs benedict and maybe it becomes a tradition where you have that every christmas morning my mom used to do oyster stew which i actually really liked as a kid which is surprising but my kids don’t like it so then my mom started doing chili for the kids because they really like that she’s not with us this Christmas she’s with my brother so I don’t know if we’ll do her chili or not but it’s so good a lot of people do the tradition of you know taking a family photo like by the Christmas tree or maybe they take a family photo and send it out on their Christmas card I haven’t done Christmas cards in ages I lost like my mailing list and then I kind of just like I don’t know kind of let it go um Then a lot of people do the white elephant. We did that at a couple of parties this year. It’s kind of fun where you, I mean, it doesn’t have to be a bad gift, but you know, where you say, I’m going to steal, you know, let’s say Mark’s opened up some really cool scarf and I’m like, Ooh, I want that scarf. And so I say, you know, I’ll steal the scarf. And then, um, and then he gets to pick a new gift or steal from someone else. It’s kind of fun because there’s lots of laughing because there’s always some gift that everybody wants. You know, that’s fun. If you’ve chosen that one, um, fun tree toppers we just do a star but the one that’s in the article I’m reading um they made a big felt like dinosaur that they you know decorated with little pom-poms and it’s a little dinosaur on top of their tree made out of felt that’s pretty cute some people do too like a like a fun cocktail for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day we’re not really drinkers but I did get um a bottle of like mimosas for us to have. And I love going around doing Christmas memories. Grandma and grandpa were just here and we talked about grandma’s dad when she was six weeks old. He left and he went to World War II. And he was gone until she was two years old. And just talking about, you know, what was special for them for Christmas and, you know, what they ate when they didn’t have a lot of money. And this was an interesting meal that they had. They got dandelion greens when they’re really little, like sprouting up in the morning. Her mom would go out in the yard or wherever, and they’d be about four inches long. And she’d pick all these dandelion greens. And she said sometimes she’d also use the roots. and they put oil and vinegar on the dandelion greens and then a hard boiled egg, which they would chop up in the salad. So they’d make a salad out of it. And grandma says it was delicious. They also had liver and onions, which was apparently really inexpensive as well. And not one of my favorites, but she still loves it to this day. So does my mom. It’s just kind of, you know, a thing, you know, that they just really love that. And that was a memory for her that, you know, she cherished. And Grandpa was talking about how poor they were, but they never thought of themselves as poor. He said, I just did not see myself as poor because all the other families were poor. And grandma was in an Italian slash Polish family. Her dad was Italian, mom Polish. But everyone was Italian on her dad’s side of the family, other than her mom, of course. And so they had a lot of traditions involving a lot of food. And then grandpa from an Irish family. And… he just said that everybody else was poor too so he didn’t see himself as poor and a lot of the kids went to like private catholic schools so they had to pay for school they were paying for school when they were you know when they didn’t have much money to spare let’s put it that way oh another fun tradition um christmas movies we’re going to a movie this christmas like later in the day um the boys in the boat supposed to be really good and then um the the christmas movies that you know you enjoy like we always watch one of the christmas vacations because i know it still makes us laugh i don’t know and some people do the real christmas tree still do you we don’t do that and we stopped doing the elf on the shelf the kids really wanted to keep doing the elf on the shelf and i’m like Are you kidding me? Like, you have to remember to move it every single night. And then I handed it over to my son when he figured out what we were doing and told him he had to move it every night. And he didn’t. And I’d always like say, oh, there was a weather alert. And so the elves, it was too dangerous for the elves to fly to the North Pole last night to report to Santa. So that’s why they didn’t move. It’s like, oh, and then remembering where you put it. I had to take a picture of where I put it because you’d hide it in so many different places. You wouldn’t even remember where you put it. You know, there’s also this holiday hide and seek. It’s some weird tradition with a pickle. And so here’s someone talking about it. It says, my mom would hide a pickle ornament on the Christmas tree for the family to find. And it says, last year she tucked it so well among her 40 years worth of ornaments that it took us two days to find the pickle. The origins of the Christmas pickle tradition are murky, but experts believe that the glass gherkin ornaments, the pickle, have been hung on American trees since the late 1800s. And so it’s find the pickle. it’s so silly we like to um you know usually drive in our car because it’s so chilly you know to look at the christmas lights but if you have a mild night it’s fun to walk around some of the nicer neighborhoods and let them you know check things out the kids um also the um opening a present on christmas eve that’s a big one for my kids they love to open one they even ask can we still open one present on christmas eve i’m like sure sure sure Well, and, you know, cooking is a big part of, you know, the holidays, you know, Christmas as well. I don’t know if you have many New Year’s traditions, usually that for many, well, many people that involves drinking. For us, it’s usually food. But we have a new thing this year. I think I told you that my 15 year old. has been taking a culinary class, but she’d also really been interested in cooking before that. And she’s learning it in the most unusual place, but I guess not unusual for this particular generation. She’s learning how to cook on TikTok and Instagram, these videos, these cooking videos. And so she’ll have a little video on and she’ll keep repeating it. And last night I had five teenagers in the kitchen and they had brought all the ingredients for gluten-free brownies because one of them is gluten-free and two of them are vegetarians and they were doing a sleepover so anyway they made this plate of pretty simple like uh you know christmas treats and one is one of my favorites where you take a rollo are you familiar with the rollo it’s the caramel with the chocolate around it and then they had um little pretzels just a traditional small pretzel And you just put them in the oven for just the slightest amount of time for the rollo to slightly melt on top of the pretzel. Now, I melt it and I put a pecan on top of that because I like nuts. But the girls not liking nuts as much because you’ve already got salt, you know, from the pretzel. The girls like not liking nuts as much. They put a little M&M on top. So it was a pretzel on the bottom and then a rollo and then an M&M and it made… super cute you know Christmas treat and then they also did pretzels with like a white chocolate kind of melted and thinned out with crunched up candy canes so it was a pretzel a little bit of white chocolate and crunched up candy cane super delicious and And then they did the gluten-free brownies. Oh, and then the other simple thing they did, they had one little container of dark chocolate melts, Ghirardelli dark chocolate melts. And they melted it in, you know, over, you can do it in the micro, but they did it over the stove, which always makes for a messy pan. But they did it over the stove. And they dipped all of the, they don’t even cut off the top of the strawberry. They dipped all of these strawberries in the chocolate. It’s just kind of cool when you can get, you know, teenagers to now kind of take over some of the Christmas cooking. Oh, and then they did chocolate chip cookies as well, which you can decorate, obviously, with lots of, you know, different colored things. My mom was a big, because their brownie pan was so tiny, it was just a little square one. I don’t think my mom ever, with four kids, three of them boys… ever made the small square pound pan of brownies my mom always made the 9×13 pan of brownies so i like the chocolate mint i’m sorry the pardon me the chocolate brownie with the mint frosting so i just bought a container of peppermint i kind of took the lazy way out i do have the stuff to actually make it but last night so much was going on we were decorating a wrapping presents and we have a puppy and everybody’s passing the puppy around and then the kids saw a spider and they were all screaming oh my gosh they’re so loud that many teenagers so anyway um but it’s fun i love it i love having them over i just took um cream cheese frosting it’s like a dollar a container and granted i know it’s not good for you it’s not the good frosting and then um some peppermint Mixed it together with a little bit of green food coloring. And then that kind of makes you, you know, your festive little brownie option. And so I did that for their gluten-free brownies. And, you know, I put it to the side because not everybody wants it, you know. So anyway, those were the ideas. And then Faith is going to do a big dinner again since she did Thanksgiving. Her homemade rolls were the best rolls I’ve ever had in my life. But she made them kind of big, you know, so we had a hard time like cooking them enough because they were… Like a roll as big as your head. I mean, she must have really been hungry when she made those rolls. And then a really delicious… The mashed potatoes were unbelievable. She said she’s never used so much butter in her life. That’s probably why. And of course, she got like the organic Irish butter. And then her gravy. I mean… Homemade gravy. I mean, this kid’s not cutting any corners. I know a grandma, my mother-in-law, she bought everything at Sam’s Club. She told me, oh, just go get it at Sam’s Club. And Faye said, no, I want to make everything myself. So she’s cooking it again for Christmas. So that should be fun as well. I hope you have a Merry Christmas. I hope you enjoy the good news. And I just hope that the stories we share on the program, you know, add to the, I don’t know, a little bit of sunshine into your day, because I certainly enjoy doing it. And I love talking to all the different interesting people that, you know, I get to talk to. So thank you so much and Merry Christmas.

SPEAKER 02 : 29:37

Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.

SPEAKER 05 : 29:47

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