Automatic episode summary
Josie Hoffman flew from Maryland to Florida for this conversation, and neither she nor Keith Vance can quite get over how she ended up in the chair. Years earlier Keith had sent her a Facebook friend request, certain she was the girl who sat beside him in kindergarten in Greenville, South Carolina. She accepted because she assumed he knew her husband, Kevin, from the joint profile the couple once shared. Only after she agreed to come on the podcast and the flight was booked did they find the mistake: Josie grew up in Denver, Colorado, and had never met him. Keith says he is learning there are no coincidences. What he actually invited her for was a survivor post she put up the year before: at twenty-one, in her junior year of college, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma - twenty-five years ago this year.
The road to that diagnosis runs through a childhood she describes without bitterness. She was the youngest of four children born inside six years, born in Denver after her parents moved from Chicago for her father's job with Exxon. He was laid off, answered a newspaper ad for a lawn sprinkler company, and was eventually handed the business outright. Two women following up with church visitors knocked on the wrong door, talked to her mother anyway, and the family reorganized around church from then on. When Josie was around seven her parents had two more children fifteen months apart: Tim, who has a birth injury, and Esther, who has Down syndrome. In the late 1980s doctors urged her parents to institutionalize both. Her parents refused.
Her parents divorced when she was eleven. Josie stayed with her father, and from twelve she was doing the back-to-school shopping, the baths, the bedtimes and the annual IEP meetings for her two younger siblings. She does not indict her mother, though she says the relationship has stayed distant and that no child should be asked to pick a parent. Her father - who grew up under an abusive alcoholic dad - gave her the line she still repeats: you cannot change what happens to you or what people do to you, but you can change how you react. He also insisted his children were representing the family name and representing God.
Her own body was a second front. Knee pain at thirteen turned out to be a genetic cartilage condition that peeled away like an onion, and she had a knee surgery every winter for five years, including a cartilage transplant she describes as an innovative new procedure at the time; two car accidents twelve months apart in high school added to it. Then the cancer moved fast: a sore throat antibiotics would not clear, then no food, then no water. The only open hospital bed in Denver that Friday was at Porter Memorial across town, which she counts as a God-story: the oncologist on call there worked for what she calls the premier Hodgkin's practice in the city, in the building next door. Kevin, still jobless after graduating with an accounting degree, happened to be at a cousin's wedding in Indiana and could drive out and stay two weeks. He got a job two days after flying home.
Six chemotherapy treatments and then radiation cost her hair, her plans, and permanently the health of her heart; she is now one hundred percent pacemaker dependent. Kevin proposed that Christmas with her hair just growing back, and the oncology nurses cried, telling her that cancer is when spouses leave, not when people get engaged. They married in January 2003 and have two daughters, sixteen and thirteen.
The back half of the episode is where Josie does her teaching: on what can be controlled (effort, reaction, perspective, focus) and what has to be surrendered; on strength redefined as mental, emotional and spiritual once the physical is limited; on Psalm 46:10 as a discipline rather than a sentiment; and on what to say to someone suffering - that it is fine to be sad, but do not stay there, find someone who can actually help, and find someone to serve.
Speakers
- Intro voiceover other
- Keith Vance host
- Josie Hoffman guest
- Crosstalk other
- Crosstalk other
Chapters
- 0:34 A friend request, mistakenly made
Keith explains how he found Josie on Facebook believing she was his kindergarten classmate, and how she accepted because she thought he knew her husband. She had already agreed to fly from Maryland before they discovered neither had ever met the other. Gifts are exchanged and Keith gives her formal introduction.
- 7:46 Her daughters, and life in Maryland
Josie describes her two very different girls - a responsible sixteen-year-old who feels called to missions, and a thrill-seeking thirteen-year-old who researches everything she loves - along with day hikes near Harper's Ferry and twenty years as a financial advisor who especially likes planning for special-needs families.
- 18:31 Denver, six kids, one sprinkler business
The family backstory: a move from Chicago for an Exxon job, a layoff, a newspaper ad that became her father's landscaping and irrigation company, and two women knocking on the wrong door who led her mother to Christ. Then Tim and Esther are born fifteen months apart, both with special needs, and doctors press her parents to institutionalize them.
- 26:20 Divorce at eleven, caretaker at twelve
Josie talks about being asked to choose which parent to live with, the toxic things said during the divorce, and the distant relationship she still has with her mother. From twelve she was bathing, feeding and shopping for her two younger siblings and sitting in their IEP meetings while working in her father's business.
- 41:40 Losing Esther at twenty-four
Esther collapses at Sam's Club, a nurse in the checkout line starts CPR, and her heart is never restarted. The family gathers in Colorado and agrees to let her go. Her memorial at a pioneer-era historic park in Denver draws more than 400 people and a clear gospel message, followed by a long stretch of joyful stories about Esther and Tim.
- 55:03 A father's work ethic and integrity
Passing out flyers, running jobs by flashlight, and a customer who tipped her fifty dollars for being the hardest working teenager he had seen. Josie says her father never cut corners, never asked of anyone what he would not do himself, and never let the busy season crowd out church.
- 1:05:58 Five knee surgeries, and learning to rest
A genetic cartilage condition found at thirteen leads to a knee surgery every winter for five years, plus two car accidents and both hands in casts one spring. Keith and Josie turn it into the episode's hinge: being forced to be still, why that takes strength, and why it is all right to let people help you.
- 1:18:41 The diagnosis at twenty-one
A sore throat that would not clear becomes an inability to swallow food, then water. The last open hospital bed in Denver puts her under the oncologist she says was the best she could have had, and a lymph node biopsy confirms Hodgkin's lymphoma. Kevin, jobless and a state away at a wedding, is able to drop everything and come.
- 1:36:50 Chemo, hair loss, and hard questions
Four drugs, six treatments, and days she spent sleeping nineteen hours or on the bathroom floor. Josie is honest about questioning God, about the loneliness of being the only twenty-one-year-old she knew with cancer, and about the man at church who told her she must have a big sin in her life.
- 1:47:56 Kevin, and a love that stayed
How they met at Pensacola Christian College, why her father asked them to wait a semester before engagement, and the proposal that came that Christmas with her hair just growing back. Josie then walks through the cardiac damage the chemotherapy left and the pacemaker she now depends on completely.
- 2:02:09 Control, surrender, strength redefined
Josie separates what she can control - effort, reaction, perspective, focus - from the plan she has to hand over, and describes how different her life is from the one she designed. That leads into physical, mental, emotional and spiritual strength, and why every kind of strength needs a foundation and daily exercise.
- 2:16:05 Motherhood, legacy, and a word for the suffering
She wants her daughters to have her values without her journey, admits she apologizes to her kids, and hopes she is teaching faith over fear rather than passing on her own medical anxiety. She closes with counsel for anyone suffering: it is all right to be sad, just do not stay there - find help, and find someone to serve.
Key takeaways
- 21:00 In the late 1980s doctors urged her parents to institutionalize both Tim and Esther. Her parents refused, holding to the conviction that the children were fearfully and wonderfully made. Keith uses it to make a wider point: cultural norms change, and parents and leaders should slow down and ask questions before adopting one.
- 45:22 Esther's memorial drew more than 400 people to a pioneer-era historic park in Denver, with Papa John's pizza - her favorite - and cupcakes. Her parents' pastor gave a clear gospel message and hymns were sung. Josie calls the chance to reach that many people the blessing inside the loss - while saying plainly she never wanted to lose a sister.
- 59:35 Her father always put in the highest quality parts and never bid cheapest, and told his children they were representing the family name and representing God. Keith points out that had he cut corners for a few extra dollars, the children watching him would have carried that instead.
- 1:14:13 Keith lays out the two meanings behind Still Strong: still as continuation - links in a chain, the daily physical, mental and spiritual work nobody notices you skipping for a while - and still as in be still and know that He is God, which he says takes more strength than moving does.
- 2:28:00 Her practical counsel for suffering: it is all right to be sad, just do not stay there; find somebody who can help you rather than only somebody to talk to; and find somebody to serve, because serving other people makes it impossible to stay focused on yourself. She also names survivor guilt as something almost nobody talks about.
Pull quotes
"You can't change what happens to you. You can't change what people do to you, but you can change how you react to them." - Josie Hoffman, quoting her father, who she says learned it under a very abusive alcoholic dad of his own.
"You have to knowingly poison yourself to get better for the future." - Josie Hoffman on what chemotherapy asks of a patient.
The nurses warned her that whatever she brought into infusion she might never be able to have again. Twenty-five years later she still cannot eat hot tamales or lemon heads, and she has to warn medical staff before they flush an IV because the taste makes her vomit on the spot.
A man at church told her mid-treatment, "You must have a really big sin in your life if God gave you cancer at 21." She says the comment caught her so off guard that she stepped back and evaluated herself. Keith's answer: that person was not a representation of God.
When she showed up at the oncologist's office wearing an engagement ring, the nurses cried. They told her that cancer is when spouses leave - not when people get engaged - and it gave her an opening to talk about Christ's love.
"I have more conversations with God about my kids than I do with my kids." - Keith Vance, on what changed in his parenting, alongside learning to call a grown child and apologize.
"It's God. It's not me... God is still good. I can still say that. I have so many blessings." - Josie Hoffman, closing the episode.
Scripture & context
- 19:50 The family came to faith by an accident of address. Two women following up with people who had visited their church knocked on the wrong door, talked to Josie's mother anyway, and shared the plan of salvation with her. She accepted Christ, and church became the center of the family's life from then on.
- 1:15:42 Psalm 46:10 - Josie names it twice as one of her favorite verses: "Be still and know." It anchors the middle of the episode, where she says being still is when we are most likely to actually talk to God.
- 2:24:44 Josie reaches for the passage about God's plans and cannot place it, guessing Jeremiah 31; she then quotes Jeremiah 33:3 from memory - call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not. Proverbs 19:21 is found and read on air a few minutes later as the nearest match to what she was after.
Questions answered
- What kind of cancer did Josie Hoffman have, and how was it found?
- Hodgkin's lymphoma, diagnosed at twenty-one during her junior year of college. It started as a sore throat an ER doctor called the worst case of strep he had seen; when two rounds of antibiotics and a reflux medication did nothing and she could no longer get food or even water down, her doctor admitted her for an endoscopy. The camera showed swollen lymph nodes pressing on her esophagus, and a biopsy of a lymph node at her collarbone confirmed the diagnosis two days later. jump · 1:18:41
- Why does she call the last open hospital bed in Denver a God story?
- Her primary care doctor called every hospital in Denver that Friday and could not find an open bed except one at Porter Memorial, across town and not convenient. The oncologist on call there worked for what she describes as the premier Hodgkin's practice in Denver, with a relationship with a doctor at Stanford, and that practice was in the building next door. She says the only bed left in the city is what put her under the best doctor she could have had. jump · 1:22:31
- What was the chemotherapy actually like?
- Four different drugs at every treatment, six treatments, one every two weeks, each about a three and a half hour infusion through a port placed in her arm. From Wednesday through Sunday or Monday she would sleep nineteen or twenty hours a day, she has large gaps in her memory from that stretch, and she slept on the bathroom floor four or five times. Her own summary: you have to knowingly poison yourself to get better for the future. jump · 1:36:50
- What did someone at church say to her while she was in treatment?
- A man came up to her in the middle of treatment and told her she must have a really big sin in her life if God gave her cancer at twenty-one. She says the comment caught her so off guard that she stepped back and genuinely evaluated herself. Keith responds that the man was not a representation of God, points to Job's friends, and warns listeners to be careful what comes out of their mouths around someone who is suffering. jump · 1:44:05
- What lasting health damage did the treatment leave?
- Severe cardiac damage from one of the four chemotherapy drugs - the one she says is nicknamed the red devil, whose number one side effect is harm to the heart. She developed a re-entry tachycardia that could push her heart rate over 200 just walking across a room, with recorded episodes above 300; when the ablation could not clear it, her AV node was deliberately scarred and she is now one hundred percent pacemaker dependent, the device already replaced twice. She has also had thyroid problems, skin cancer removed four times, an inflammation of the lining around the heart, and two hip surgeries. jump · 1:54:17
- How did she and Kevin meet, and when did they actually get engaged?
- They met her second week at Pensacola Christian College, where he was a year ahead of her and roomed with a friend from her church. When Kevin asked her father for permission at Christmas of his senior year, her dad asked them to wait a semester, which hurt them both, and they waited. She was diagnosed that summer and was not engaged during treatment - she describes it as virtually engaged. He proposed that Christmas when she flew to Maryland, with her hair just starting to come back, and they married in January 2003. jump · 1:47:56
- What did growing up with two special-needs siblings teach her?
- She says Esther, her sister with Down syndrome, could not be hurried to save her life, and that taught her to slow down, take the time, and decide what actually matters. She calls both siblings a great deal of work and a blessing in the same breath, and says siblings like hers teach you things about life you cannot learn from anybody else. Esther also taught her patience and love for people - Josie says she never met somebody she did not like. jump · 24:20
- How does she think about control versus surrender?
- She says we are given real things to control - our effort, our reactions, our perspective, our focus - but not the plan. Her own plan was to stay in Colorado, have five children and marry a youth pastor, and her life looks nothing like that. She says she could not enjoy the life she has if she had not surrendered it, and that the harder she holds on to control the worse it goes, though she admits she keeps trying to take it back. jump · 2:02:42
- What does 'strength redefined' mean to her?
- She says we default to thinking of strength as physical - the strong man, the strong building, the powerful car - but there is also mental, emotional and spiritual strength, and when one is taken away you can find it in the others. With her physical capacity limited she uses her mind in a thinking job, prays, and reaches out to other people. Every kind of strength, she says, is derived from a foundation, and it takes daily exercise to keep it up. jump · 2:09:14
- What does she tell someone in the middle of suffering?
- That it is all right to be sad, discouraged or depressed - she points to her pastor's message on Elijah, who wanted to die and was told to eat and sleep and start over - but do not stay there. Find somebody who can actually help you, not just somebody to talk to, whether that is a friend, a therapist or a spiritual leader. And find somebody to serve, because when you are serving other people you cannot stay focused on yourself. jump · 2:27:23
Helpful links
book
- Promises of God One of two books Josie brought Keith; she says God's promises never change and can be learned and returned to. No title page, author or web address is given on air.
- An autobiography of R. G. LeTourneau The second gift book, about the Christian inventor behind much earth-moving equipment; Josie names the man but not the book's title, and gives no web address.
other
- Pensacola Christian College Where Josie and Kevin both attended and met in her second week of school; named on air with no web address given.
product
- Boots and Bubbles The Southern-style dirty soda business run by Keith's two daughters, available for events in the Lee County area; the mid-episode read points to a link in the bio rather than a spoken address.
verse
- Psalm 46:10 The verse Josie names twice as a favorite: be still, and know that I am God.
- Jeremiah 33:3 Quoted from memory by Josie: call unto me, and I will answer thee.
- Proverbs 19:21 Read on air as the closest match to the passage about God's plans that Josie was trying to place.
Full transcript
Intro voiceover: I learned the hard way, nothing's overnight, some days you lose, some days you survive. Still Strong, even moving slow, every step counts more than you know. I found gold in the everyday, showing up and staying brave.
Keith Vance: Josie Hoffman, welcome to the podcast.
Josie Hoffman: It's good to be here.
Keith Vance: Josie, you got an interesting story. We're going to dig into it. The reason why you're sitting here is at 21, you're diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer. That's why you're here. Before we get down the business, I want to take care of some other business. Kind of give a little backstory of how we met and why you're here. So about 10 years ago, my sister was putting on an event. And the speaker of that event, come to find out, was in my kindergarten class. And when I lived in Greenville, South Carolina for those five years. So we connected, became Facebook friends. And then through him, I started finding other kids that were my kindergarten class, first grade class, and just started connecting. Josie Hoffman showed up on my friends you might know. And I sat next to Josie in school. She was right next to me in kindergarten. Okay. The teacher's pet. I was the troublemaker. Okay. So the two of us did not get along. She, I, I got a lot of spankings at home because I got a lot of notes at home because of Josie. I cheated off her test. Hey, teacher. You know, he's looking at my paper, like, like everything. So, oh, Josie, we sit next to each other. So I became Facebook friends with you.
Josie Hoffman: So even after that in kindergarten, you wanted to be Facebook friends.
Keith Vance: I did. I did. That's just the way. I'm just a good person. I don't, I don't hang on to that stuff. So you and I have been Facebook friends for probably, what, five to 10 years, I want to say.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah, I think it's about that time. Yeah.
Keith Vance: So you had posted last year, I believe, your cancer survivor story. I messaged you. I said, hey, your story resonates. I'm doing a thing called, a podcast called Still Strong. It's about life struggles. Would you be on the podcast? Long story short, you agreed. We booked the flight.
Keith Vance: You're here from Maryland, all the way to Florida. Correct. Okay. And after you agreed and booked the flight and everything, you said, hey, let's play a game. How do we know each other? I'm like, Josie, what do you mean, how do we know each other? We sat next to each other in kindergarten. I started name dropping people. I named our teacher. She's like, no, I don't know any of those people. And I didn't, I've never, like, I didn't go, I went to school in Colorado. So mistaken identity. Mm-hmm. But I just still can't get over this. Because you agreed to come before you knew who I was.
Josie Hoffman: Well, but in fairness, remember, I thought that you knew my husband. And that's why I had accepted the friend request. Because I thought we, I used to have a joint profile with my husband. Okay. He didn't want his own for a long time. Yeah. People did that. So I thought that you knew my husband. And then we had that one mutual friend. Yeah. And so I was like, oh, well, you know, it's probably just somebody I've bumped into in the past who also knows my husband. I don't accept requests from, like, strange people. Yeah. It sounds terrible. But that's why I was like, oh, well, that's, you know, we just connected that way. Yeah. So.
Keith Vance: I'm beginning to learn that there are no coincidences. Very true. And you being here, I think, is providential. Just having you here yesterday, getting to know you and your husband, like, we're cut from the same cloth. I connected you with you quickly. And I'm looking forward to growing a relationship with you and your husband. Absolutely. I found out a lot about Maryland. Like, my wife wants to travel. It's only a three-hour flight. I know. You're right outside D.C. So my wife's like, hey, Keith, one good thing about this podcast is you're meeting a lot of people all over the place. We can, like, do some traveling. All these people we can go see. Yeah. So let me, a couple things. I'm going to give you a formal introduction. But before I do, I normally give out my Richardson 112 hats. But you didn't seem to be the hat type wearing gal. That's fair. So I got you one of my Still Strong t-shirts.
Josie Hoffman: I will wear a t-shirt.
Keith Vance: You can wear that while you're out doing your yard work and whatever you do. But then it would get all dirty.
Josie Hoffman: Is it supposed to get dirty?
Keith Vance: You can do what you want. It's Still Strong, baby. It's Still Strong, girl.
Josie Hoffman: I brought something for you and your wife. Okay. So here's your wife's gift.
Josie Hoffman: I think your wife does a lot of coordinating for you and organizing. So I figured she could use something. Thank you.
Keith Vance: Yeah, she books the flights. She does. She sets it all up. She's a busy woman. She's like, Keith, quit starting businesses because every business you start is more work for me. It's true with it, Michael.
Josie Hoffman: And then I've watched the podcast. I know you're not a big reader. Well, you're not a book lover. However, these are two books I thought you might actually enjoy. So this is just Promises of God. And I find that, and we'll talk about it probably more on the podcast, the promises of God are always true and they never change. And so if you can learn them and you can reference them and you can go back to them, they've been a great comfort to me or a challenge. You know, like you have to do this to get this. But God always fulfills his promises. So and then I don't know. Do you know the story of R.G. Letourneau? No. So I thought with you being in the construction business, this would be kind of appropriate. My dad told me about him. He's a man who developed a lot of the equipment that like Caterpillar uses and things, a lot of the earth moving equipment. He was also a very, very, very strong Christian man of God. Cool. And so this is just one of, you know, one of his autobiographies.
Keith Vance: Cool. Thank you.
Josie Hoffman: But he talks a lot about his faith and about how God gave him the talent that he uses to create this equipment. So I know you don't always have a lot of spare time, but I thought that one might be interesting for you.
Keith Vance: I'll do it. Thank you. So. Thank you. Yeah. When we, when we find, when we find out what we're built for and the talents that God gives us to accomplish what we're built for, there's nothing like it. I agree. Not everybody has, not everybody has found what they're built for. A lot of people are just going through the motions, going to a job they hate and just, just, but when you find what you're built for, and especially as a Christian, when even the plowing, your manual work can be used for the glory of God. Yes. That's a whole nother level of fulfillment and blessing. Absolutely. Yeah. So thank you. I will read that. You ready for this proper introduction? Sure. Here we go.
Josie Hoffman: Let's see how you go.
Keith Vance: Here we go. Josie Hoffman, born in Denver, Colorado. I've been to Denver once and I liked it. I enjoyed Denver.
Josie Hoffman: Good. I'm glad you liked it.
Keith Vance: Yeah. You've been married to your husband, Kevin, for 23 years. I met him yesterday for the first time. I love that guy.
Josie Hoffman: He's a great guy.
Keith Vance: He's kind spirited. You can tell he's just a very kind person. Yes. Gracious.
Josie Hoffman: Very gracious. Yeah. He balances me out in every way that I could ask for. So.
Keith Vance: You have two daughters, 16 and 13. Let's talk about them for a while because I got five daughters. I got two teenage daughters that you've met. Close in age. Yeah. So let's talk about your girls. What are they like?
Josie Hoffman: So Katie just turned 16 in January. In the state of Maryland, you can't get your license till 16 in nine months. So she's still doing the permit thing. She's ready to get her license. Get a little bit of freedom. She is so responsible. I don't know how I got such a responsible kid. She loves the Lord. Loves the Lord. And she challenges me spiritually. At times I feel like she's a more consistent Christian than I am, to be honest. That's cool. She loves the Lord. She actually feels called to missions. She doesn't know where. She's got kind of open, open mind, but she, she's a heart for the lost heart for people hurting heart for that. Good student, typical firstborn, very diligent, you know, does her chores, keeps her room clean, helps around the house. You know, I'm the firstborn.
Keith Vance: So everything you're talking about, I feel like that's you, right? See, I was the fourthborn.
Josie Hoffman: I was not responsible. I was responsible.
Keith Vance: I was responsible to the task dictated to me. But when you talk about your daughter being, having a heart for God and all that, like I didn't, I didn't have that in me until much later, but I could get my work done and be responsible.
Josie Hoffman: It's never too late, right? Keith, you've got a heart for God now.
Keith Vance: Yeah. So your other daughter, the 13 year old.
Josie Hoffman: She is my thrill seeker, my adventure taker, my very emotional child in good ways. She's very passionate, but she also feels things very deeply. You know, there's two sides to it. She grew five inches in seven months and four shoe sizes. Wow. She's all of a sudden almost taller than I am. Wow. And she can't keep up with her body. You know, she's at that age where, but she's wild, crazy, daring. I tell everybody she's either going to probably marry a missionary and go to some third world country and develop a way to get water to the village, or she's going to be an engineer and redo bridges across the country. Um, she's currently trying to decide between being a school teacher or an air. horse pilot for a career. That's cool. So she's just very passionate, very, um, feeling very empathetic. She loves to do research on topics she loves, you know, so we got, we got them guinea pigs and Thanksgiving and she'd researched everything about what they needed and the cages and the food and this, and you know, she's, and when we took them to the vet, um, because we learned that we were not given two females, we were given a male and a female. So we took the male to the vet to get them to neutered. So we didn't have more and more and more guinea pigs. She knew so much. The vet offered her a job on the spot.
Keith Vance: What kind of tools you'd need to neuter a freaking guinea pig, huh? Some micro tools. I mean, very little, very little, something similar to dentistry tools.
Josie Hoffman: So, um, so she's very passionate about what she loves, you know, she's got a good set of friends. She's, she's going through her own spiritual journey. You know, she's passionate, but sometimes she struggles with what do other people think of me, which my firstborn doesn't really struggle with that, you know? So, um, they're, they're good kids. God blessed us with really good kids. We've tried to keep them. We tried to keep God in the center of their life. I worry as a parent, I'm going to mess them up someday, but you know, God has given us great kids. They have a very good reputation at the church and school for being hardworking servants, you know? And yet we love, um, like this summer, we're going to go to Cedar Point in Ohio. We love roller coasters. We love hiking. We love, I don't know, pretty out adventurous outdoors.
Keith Vance: Just a little bit. I got to know you. The circle of Christianity that you run with is on the conservative side. And I, I associate conservative ism with judgmentalism. Yeah. And you are anything but judgmental.
Josie Hoffman: Well, thank you.
Keith Vance: Um, and even like listening to the way you're raising your girls, like just having, you're having real heart to heart conversations where it's easier just to say, just do it. Cause I told you to, but you're like, you're telling me conversations you're having with your, with your girls. And I think that's important. And I wish like looking back on my kids, I wish I would have invested some time in those kinds of conversations. Cause I felt like we would have got further in our relationship, not only with our relationship, but with, with the relationship with God, I felt like I might've hindered their perception of God because of, because I told you to, no, I got to get to work. You know what I mean? Slowing down this, to have those conversations. Uh, women are built differently than men. Luckily my wife is in tune with that. And she speaks into my children. Like she speaks into them.
Josie Hoffman: Well, I think there's a little bit of scripture behind that too, you know?
Keith Vance: So you got some hobbies, some interest and some passions here. You like hiking roller coasters. Listen, you and I would not get along cause I get sick. And, but you said your husband gets sick and my wife likes roller coasters. You're into animals, um, your church and the special needs community. Any of those you want to talk about? Like what kind of hiking trips you go on?
Josie Hoffman: So we take like shorter day hikes, especially with some of my long-term health challenges related to the cancer. Um, but we'll do, you know, things down there in Harper's Ferry. We're about 20 minutes from Harper's Ferry where we are in Maryland. And there's a lot of trails that you can go on, you know? So like I said, they're day hikes, they're two, three hours. Um, we've done like the cabin in West Virginia and then you can just hike and run around through the woods and things like that. So when I say hiking, it's not like the repelling hiking in Colorado, but it's a lot of fun. I love to be outside. I love to be, um, out in nature. I know that sounds funny, but the quiet away from the craziness of life, just enjoying the quiet out there. Uh, you know, enjoying the beauty. There's such beauty in this country. Like that's the cool thing about growing up in Colorado and then moving out to Maryland and traveling to other parts of the country. Our country is so diverse and I've often thought about it, you know, God could have made everything the same.
Keith Vance: Oh, that's a good point.
Josie Hoffman: God could have, you know, and you mean it different. And like, I love sunsets, love sunsets and sunrises. Like I love the change and the beauty and I take pictures all the time of it. And it's once again, God could have just had the sun come up, but God gives us the beauty of the sunrise and the sunset. And I think it's another time to reflect and also, you know, just take a deep breath and look and enjoy and stuff. So I do like to be outdoors. That's the hiking.
Keith Vance: When I picked you up from the airport, it was around 1130. He said, have you guys ate lunch yet? You said, no. So we went and had lunch. And I said, well, we can go to the hotel or we can come to my house, have some coffee and talk, or we can go out to our ranch and like have a scenic view. And like, can I show you around? And your husband's like, I like scenic, scenic views. So we took a ride out there and I rode the side by side around our property. And we talked about connection. nature and just going out there. It's only 40 minutes from here, but just getting out there and seeing the open pastures with the cows. And then we rode around the side by side and just turned it off and just hearing the wind and the nature without the human element. It has an effect on your stress level and everything else. Yeah. It's important. Yeah.
Josie Hoffman: Yes. And it's, I always love, I think the Bible talks about in Matthew, you know, God takes care of the lilies and the sparrows and those animals don't have a care in the world. I mean, the donkeys were a little stressed when we came in because they weren't sure what was going on, but you know, they just, they just live life and they love it and they don't, you know, it's a good lesson. It's a good lesson. Cause I get caught up in so many cares and needs and stresses and, you know, the lady that pulled out in front of us in traffic and animals don't care about that. It's a good lesson.
Keith Vance: But you have a career in finance, you're a financial advisor. You've been doing it for 20 years for a large firm that we said it, everybody would know. We're going to talk about that a little bit. Is that a passion of yours?
Josie Hoffman: It is. I love helping people set goals, set, you know, what they want to do with their money. I think money serves the purpose. And so what purpose do you want or what is the end game and helping people get there? I also love helping people understand, like I grew up in a very blue collar household. My dad didn't understand investing. A lot of people I talked to don't understand investing or, you know, they're saving, but are they making their money work the best that it can so they can do the things they want? You know, and I love helping people understand that, you know, plan for things, find the next thing, um, within the special needs community. That's a different level of financial planning. I love helping parents with that. They have enough to handle with taking care of the child. Let me help you with the finances. Let me help you plan. Let me help you set things up. So it is something I'm very passionate about. Um, I didn't discover that till I got to college. I wanted to go into business, but I didn't know what, and then I started taking classes and it was like, that's what I want to do. You know? So it is something I love.
Keith Vance: So the, um, last, the last thing here now ask everyone is you're 46 years old, 46. So, um, time flies, um, but with age, with age, we still have, we, we mature, we gain wisdom.
Josie Hoffman: We should, right?
Keith Vance: Um, but we still have, we always need to set goals and always need to keep moving forward. Even at 46, 56, 66, like we might not be able to do the things we did the way we did in our twenties, but still getting after those things that God has forced us to do. Yeah. And you're doing that.
Josie Hoffman: I'm trying. I don't want to, I don't want to sit still. I don't want to stop. I don't want to. Yeah. You do have to change.
Keith Vance: Yeah. Adapt. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's, let's do your backstory. So I learned a lot about you in our conversation, but life for Josie growing up, um, in this wheelhouse of your growing up in your home, I know you had two special needs siblings that were, we want to talk about what was like taking care of them. What were they like? And so let's just, let's just get the ball rolling. Sure. And then as we connect on things providentially or accidentally, we can just kind of like, Hey, hit the pause button and just drill down there. We'll just take it, take it slow and see where it goes. Sounds good. All you.
Josie Hoffman: Sounds good. I, like you said, I was born in Denver, Colorado. I, there, my parents had, um, they just moved from Chicago to Denver about a year and a half before I was born. My dad moved out there. He worked for Exxon. They were looking at him to manage car washes out there. And so I was the first child born in Colorado. I was the youngest of six or four born in six years. Parents thought they were done, you know, raising these four kids. Um, I was definitely the spoiled youngest for a little while. I'll admit that. And then when I was, I think I was two or three, I obviously don't remember cause I was younger. My dad got laid off from Exxon and he started working for, um, a man. He found the job in the newspaper, which you don't find jobs in the newspaper anymore, but, uh, he had his, uh, lawn sprinkler company. So he started working there and then the man gave him the business. So my dad grew up running, uh, landscaping and irrigation company. So as you understand with kids, you know, the kids naturally are workers in the business. That's the way it works. So I grew up helping my dad summers, you know, learning about this business, learning hard work. Um, my dad's probably one of the hardest working men I know. He set a really good example on that. And then, um, when I was little, I think it was around four, these ladies knocked on my front door. My mom stayed home. Mom answers the door and they were ladies following up with visitors who'd come to their church the last week, but they had the wrong address. It wasn't. my parents, but they decided to talk to my mom anyway. And she, they shared with her the plan of salvation. She accepted Christ. She got saved. That's how we got in church. So then we started going to church. My parents became believers and then the world changed a lot. Prior to that, my dad was a good dad. He wasn't a bad dad. My mom was a good mom, but it was a different focus. God definitely became a part of our life. You know, we went to church, things were great. And then when I was around seven, my parents decided maybe we should have more kids. You know, I think every parent has different discussions with that. So, um, they had two kids, 15 months apart, both of them special needs. Tim was actually a birth injury. So he's kind of got touches of things. And then Esther was born 15 months later and she has Down syndrome. Neither one of them they knew before birth, obviously. So it was a surprise in the delivery room. Believe it or not, this was the late eighties. They tried to talk my parents into institutionalizing both of them, you know, because at that time, like they didn't have the same capabilities. They didn't have the same programs. And my parents very much adhered to, you know, it talks about, um, were fearfully and wonderfully made. God knew they were going to be that way. God knew that, but it was a big adjustment for our family. I also went from the privilege. Yeah.
Keith Vance: There's this recurring theme with how over time society has certain mindsets that may or may not be right, but it's just the way it was.
Keith Vance: So with what you just said, like in society to institutionalize them, if that was the norm.
Crosstalk: Yep. Cause they were seen as a burden.
Keith Vance: And I'm in my, in my personal walk with how I'm navigating this life, I'm becoming more aware aware of the norms of our culture that may not be normal and may have an effect on how I think. So thankful for your mom and dad. Yes. Who didn't go with the norm of culture, but had something else inside of them that they went with. Yes. And I think it's important for us as parents, leaders, anybody in a position of authority to slow down and ask some questions before we just go with what culture or society says is normal. Yes. Because culture changes. Yes. I mean, a hundred years, like, like look how much it's changed in our lifetime.
Josie Hoffman: Well, yeah, definitely. I mean, even something as extreme as slavery or, um, women weren't allowed to vote or be homeowners, you know, or yeah, there's a lot of things. And also along those lines, that's kind of a subtopic, but society as a whole, but also the little societies, like you talked about, you know, what stripe of conservatism you want or whatever. Those also have norms that I think sometimes should be challenged. Obviously, if it's founded in God's word, it shouldn't be challenged, but other times I think they should be challenged, I think, or at least evaluate it, I guess is a better way of looking at it.
Keith Vance: It's kind of scary for me because I like things in nice, clean boxes and life is not life. Sometimes the answers aren't clear. It's true. And as a husband, father, grandfather, like I want to make sure that I'm getting it right and not just, we're going to go this way because of, because it's in a nice, clean box. Anyway, I'm just challenging my own thinking. Why do I, why do I think the way that I think? Why do I do the things I do? What is persuading that thought? So, cause we're all, there's all these things pulling us. So anyway, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to stop your conversation.
Josie Hoffman: It's conversational. We're supposed to, right?
Keith Vance: Yeah. Yeah. So it was normal for them to be institutionalized because they're perceived as burdens. Yeah. Your, your parents went against the norm. They did. Okay. So let's, let's pick it up.
Josie Hoffman: It was a big shift for me. I was the youngest privileged baby. We'll say my sister says I was very indulged. I don't know. My perspective's different. I probably was. So not only did I have younger siblings, but they took a lot of my parents' time. A lot of time. A lot of time. They took a lot of everybody's time. But you know, one of the things that having two special needs siblings has taught me so much about life is slow down, take the time, evaluate, decide what's important. You know, one of the things that we always talk about with Esther, my little sister with Down syndrome, you could not hurry that child to save her life. You could not. Never rush her anywhere. She just took her time. She just did what she wanted in life, you know? And sometimes I get so caught up in being hurried that I, you know, I have to be here at this time and I have to go see this person and I have to get this done. And, but sometimes we need to take a step back and we need to take a break, you know, and having two special needs siblings. Now they were not my children. So I can't say from a parental perspective, but siblings, they teach you so much about life that you cannot learn from anybody else. And I think I love how society has embraced them and made them mainstream or whatever you want to call it, because you can learn from them. You can appreciate them. And yes, there are more work. They are a, I mean, I guess a burden from the broadest standpoint, but they're not because they are a blessing. They take a lot of work, but they are a blessing. So my parents, Esther, so Tim was on oxygen for a little while. He had some health issues. They didn't know, you know, how he's going to turn out because he was a birth injury, basically with, you know, what is he capable of? What's his, his things going to be. And then when Esther came along, um, that was another parameter, you know, down syndrome, most people don't know comes on various of severity for lack of a better term. And of course, you don't really know that when the kid's born, you know, they're a baby. There's, you know, Esther was born with a hole in her heart that they knew they're going to have to fix surgically. She's born with some other health complications. She was on oxygen. I think the first eight months of her life, which anybody who's had to carry oxygen everywhere they go, my heart goes out to you. It's, you know, you have to pack up. It's another level. Um, especially back then. Yes. It was very different back then with a baby and you know, whatever. Um, but, but we had fun in it. You know, we enjoyed watching them hit milestones. We enjoyed seeing them. Um, and then like, well, we're just transitioning through childhood. When I was 11, my mom decided she wanted to divorce my dad. I was a child. I don't know that you ever understand that. You know, your parents tell you what's going on, but I think you don't ever understand it. And I think every parent makes, or every person makes the decision that they feel is best in the moment. Um, I don't understand my mom's decision, but I also was not her. So I'm not going to sit and say, I would have never done the same thing or I would have, you know, whatever. I think there were strains in their marriage. Um, there was something, she was upset at my dad for a couple of things and I think she just never got over it. And then I think the extra pressure of the kids was just too much. My dad owned his own business and she was trying to homeschool us. And there were, you know, these two special needs kids that took all this work. And I think she was just done.
Keith Vance: So something, so something that I'm learning from whatever God has in this Still Strong podcast, one thing that I'm personally learning is you only know what you know from your angle of view and you don't see the whole angle. You never know the whole story. You don't know it all. Yeah. And human beings are prone to make harsh judgments based on the sliver of angle that they see from their perception. And I'm learning that you can't go wrong, giving someone the benefit of the doubt or giving them some grace to say, Hey, you know what? I might not know the whole thing. There are some other things at play here that I may not know. And the divorce, like there's a lot of people I've had in those podcasts that most of them I think have been gone through divorce. And it's from a child standpoint, you can speak to this from a child standpoint. It's, it's like a ripping apart. It's like your life is, is, is just a rip, like an open wound. So there's what you feel and you have your perception of where you're at, but there's also other perceptions, right? There's also other angles that you're not knowing.
Josie Hoffman: And, um, my dad used to say people usually make a different decision because they have different information than you. And it's very true. Same perspective, you know?
Keith Vance: Um, yeah, um, again, I like things in nice, clean boxes. Life is not in clean boxes. It's not in clean boxes. It's messy.
Josie Hoffman: I don't even know if it's in the same room sometimes.
Keith Vance: So 11 years old, you were having your own, your own feelings. I'm guessing like you're, I'm sure that at 11 years old, you're especially a girl, you're trying to figure out who you are as a person. Yeah. And so I can, I can imagine how you must've been feeling. Did it, what emotions played or at play in that 11 year old girl? Was there depression? Was there anger? Was there sadness? Was there frustration? Like do you?
Josie Hoffman: I think there's a lot of frustration. I think one of the things that divorced kids have to deal with is. especially at the age I was is like, I mean, my mom said, you need to pick who you want to live with. Well, how do you, how do you pick a parent?
Keith Vance: How do you pick a parent?
Josie Hoffman: How do you pick a parent? And my mom, when I was little, like we did fun stuff. She read books with us, took us to the park, you know, and my dad, like how do you pick your parents? Impossible. How do you do that? And then you feel like it's this big, huge decision that's permanent. And there's all these other dynamics, like what are my siblings going to pick? And what if my sibling picks a different choice and, you know, what's going to happen there? And I think it, I think it ruins a lot of foundation and I'm not, I'm not criticizing any parenthood horses. Please don't think that. I will say as a child, it's, it's emotionally devastating. That sounds very dramatic, but it's the truth. And I know life happens. I'm not saying there should never be divorce. I'm just saying it's hard. And then I will say, you always have that little tiny hope that your parents are going to get back together someday. It's all going to, it's all going to go back to the way it was, you know? And especially as a child, you don't notice the problems, you know, unless they're major, you don't notice that, you know, my parents maybe not, maybe didn't get along very well or whatever. I don't remember any of that. I just remember all of a sudden my parents are like, Oh, we're getting divorced.
Keith Vance: I can almost guarantee you that the oldest sibling picked up on a lot of that stuff. She did. She did. Because she was 17 as me being the oldest, I had a perception of what's going on in our household. The younger ones, you kids are just running around chasing butterflies. Like, you know, you guys are just, Oh, absolutely.
Josie Hoffman: We, we're having fun. The older ones are carrying all the burden, man. Yeah, it's very true. And my sister's viewpoint of the divorce. It's very different than mine, you know, very different. And of course she had different things said to her or people said, she had some things said to her that were pretty toxic in themselves. I had things said to me that were pretty toxic in myself. You know, um, I also know that hurting people hurt people. I think somebody said that on one of your previous podcasts.
Keith Vance: There's a lot of recurring themes happening.
Josie Hoffman: And my mom was hurt by a lot of people and a lot of things happened during the divorce that, um, will probably impact me the rest of my life. My mom and I have a very distant tentative relationship. We've never really had a close one after the divorce. I hope someday we could get together with it. I can share with you my viewpoint, but this is not to be, I guess, judgmental of my mother. No, she was, she's very angry at my father, very angry at my father. And I was pretty close to my dad. I think I was going through the divorce. I was one of the closest ones. And she took a lot of it out on me to hurt my dad. And I know my mom loved me. And I think my mom still loves me. I'm not, I don't doubt her love, but I often felt, and sometimes I still feel that, um, her love was conditional. And also her dislike, hatred, anger, whatever emotion you want to use. towards my dad was stronger than her love towards me. That's also hard as a kid. That's painful. Yeah.
Keith Vance: That's painful. But again, I'm learning so much sitting over here, listening to people's stories over there. Everybody is a teacher. Yeah. Yeah. Positively and negatively. And when we can, through God's grace, say, you know what? I think my mom did the best she can. She had her demons. She had her thing. Mm-hmm. Her choices made me feel this way. I'm going to stop that here with me. I'm not going to pass that along to my kids. Absolutely. Given your mom grace. Yes. Mom, I don't know the whole story, but I learned something here and I'm going to, I'm going to change. I'm going to change because we can continue that. We can be like, yes, like you said, hurting people hurt. Bitter parents can have bitter children, like all these things. But when we have some clarity and be like, man, I got, I know how I felt. I'm not going to pass it along to my babies. And that's a good thing. Right. That's a good thing.
Josie Hoffman: I find that. And I decided when I had kids that I would not make, I would try not to make the same mistakes that my mom made.
Keith Vance: And you're just making different ones.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah, I am making different ones. I'll admit that.
Keith Vance: Yeah, we all do.
Josie Hoffman: I was hard being a teenage girl without a mom. My oldest sister was off at college. She was a great support to me, but she's off at college. My grandmother at the time lived in Florida. She's a great support to me, but just down in Florida, you know, and I had to go through a lot of the teen things without a mom. And I remember deciding as a teenager that I would do everything that I could not to do that to a kid. And I try now with my girls to take the good from what I was raised and use. that, but I try to be to my girls what I didn't have. And I think like you said, everybody can be a teacher. You can learn from negative experiences just as much as positive ones, you know, and you can say, okay, I don't want to do that. Not that that person's terrible, but I don't want to do that behavior. And I don't want my kids to have to do that. And I think we can learn from that because it does change our behavior and shape. And, you know, back to God's promises, God promises to take care of the widows and the orphans, which I was not a widow or an orphan, but I was motherless, I would say. And he put different women in my life at different times that I needed to help me.
Keith Vance: And you didn't even realize it in the time.
Josie Hoffman: No, you don't. And I look back now and I'm very thankful for some of those women, you know, very thankful. And my dad tried his best. He tried so hard to be both parents. And I look back at my dad going through that time and I have so much respect for him. He, he took it very well. Does that make sense? He didn't complain. He didn't never bad mouth my mom. He never did. He never was negative towards her, you know, and I think that he probably couldn't because he probably felt guilty.
Keith Vance: Whatever she was mad at him about, he probably felt guilty. He probably did. You know, I'm just putting myself in his shoes. He probably like, I, I carry a lot of guilt about things like how I raised my kids, like looking back and like guilt will put you in your place. Yeah. Guilt will put you in your place.
Josie Hoffman: Well, guilt will also consume you if you don't give it up. That sounds terrible. But you know, um, one of my kids' favorite songs right now is it's, um, there'll be a day when I, when I am like Jesus and I'll forget everything that I've confessed to him. So, you know, when we confess our sins to God, they're gone and we hold onto them. Yeah. You know, and if sometimes we need to confess and move on, not that there's not consequences, but I think sometimes that can cause more damage too, because if we don't let go of the mistakes that we made, they can consume us in the present.
Keith Vance: Listen, you hit something powerful because I learned something. When you relive past events, not only does it have a mental wear on you, but whatever, whatever you were, whatever those events were that you were living that caused you anxiety, that caused you fear, that caused you whatever, when you rehearse those over your head, those same effects physically you're having on you.
Josie Hoffman: Yes. Yep. It does.
Keith Vance: So if you back then, if whatever you went through gave you an ulcer, when you relive that you're prone to get an ulcer, like all these, these stressors on your body memory. Yeah. I never, I didn't know that, but it makes sense. It makes sense because there are some things in my life that I relived over and over because it felt good. And then just to feel that fatigue, that fatigue. So there's something to be said for leaving at the cross. Yeah. Let him carry it. We're not, we're not built. Listen, we are physically not built to be carrying around this stuff for an extended period of time. It's going to come out somewhere. It does. Without the cross, it comes out in alcoholism. It comes out in, in, in hatred. It comes out in bitterness. It comes out in, in hurting someone else. It's going to come out somewhere. We're not built to walk around with all this stuff. Hmm. Yeah.
Crosstalk: Um, I want to talk about if we can, I want to talk to you about your, your sister with a down syndrome.
Keith Vance: Sure. And I think you were her caretaker. Like when your parents got divorced, it was you and your dad and my brother, your, your, your brother and your sister.
Josie Hoffman: So when my parents got divorced of the six kids, my oldest sister was at college. And then when she came home, like break, she would live with my dad and then she became an RN. So she was pretty busy with that. And then the next sister down moved with my mom. So she was with my mom full time. And then my brother and I are two years apart. We stayed with my dad and then Timmy and Esther, my parents had joint custody, which changed probably every 12 months. I lost track of, you know, whatever. Um, they were with my dad predominantly because we had a better school district for them to be in with the special needs community. So when they were with my dad, I was a mom. I wasn't mom, but I was like you said, a caretaker. I did a lot of the back to school shopping and the giving them a bath at night, getting them to bed, getting them up in the morning.
Keith Vance: How old were you during this timeframe?
Josie Hoffman: Started at age 12. 12. My dad used to drop my brother and I off at the grocery store to go grocery shopping. And then he would go do a job and come back and pick his. up and take it. So, I mean, you know, we just, you learn, you learn fast.
Keith Vance: Sometimes life deals you cards and you don't have time to process it. You just need to keep moving and figure it out. You can't stop. And so it sounds like you guys were thrown into this, you're just slung into this situation where we got to figure it out.
Josie Hoffman: But you know, sometimes being that busy is good. It a doesn't allow you to feel sorry for yourself and be as a teenager, it probably kept me out of trouble. I'm a pretty adventurous kid. I might've done things I would have regret. I didn't have time. Like I just flat out didn't have time. I didn't have time to get into teen dating. Not that I'm, you know, you know, I didn't have time to get into the wrong activities. I didn't, I was busy. I was doing full-time school. I was still in high school, junior high and high school. And then I helped my dad in his business during the season and helped with Tim and Esther and grocery shopping and back to school shopping. And in the special needs community, they have a meeting every year called the IEP. It's individual education plan. And it's the parents, the teachers, everybody trying to create a team to set a plan, you know, cause every special needs kid is different. And those always got contentious cause my mom would be there and my dad would be there and I would be there. And then all these teachers are there. And of course my mom and dad don't agree on anything and you know, it just gets complicated and stuff. And so I did a lot of that. You learn a lot about, like I said, patience. Esther taught me more patience than I will probably be able to use, even though I'm still impatient. Wow. But she taught me so much about love for others. Esther never met somebody she didn't like. She just loved everybody, loved everybody. And, uh, so Esther, she was born with a heart defect. They did open heart surgery at 16 months. And then her heart was pretty healthy after that. She didn't have a lot of complications with her heart. She was prone to ear infections and, um, she had eye surgery. What else did Esther have? You know, she had stuff here and there, but once she got past like three or four, she was physically pretty healthy. She didn't have a lot of challenges. And, uh, you're probably going this direction anyway. When I was, so Esther was 24. So I would have been 33. My dad called and he said, Esther just collapsed at Sam's club. She's with Flora, which is my step-mom. Um, I gotta go. I gotta call the doctors back. You know, I'm at work, answer the phone, whatever. And he called my sister and he called my brother. And my sister at the time lived in South Bend, Indiana. And my brother lived in San Francisco, California. And we're all just kind of anxiously waiting, you know, trying to figure out what's going on. Cause Esther was relatively healthy at that time. My dad called us all back. Um, she'd been shopping with my step-mom at Sam's club. And they were eating at the picnic tables there, you know, like in the food court. And she stood up and she said, it hurts. And of course her speech was pretty limited. She didn't have a white speech. And then she just collapsed. And there was a nurse in the checkout line who came over and started doing CPR right away. And they called the nebulins of course. And they got her to the ER, but they never got her heart restarted for almost 20 minutes. They were doing CPR. They never got her heart restarted. Um, and they did like the reflex testing in the ER and she didn't really have any reaction, but they do a medical procedure where they cool the body down for 24 hours. And it helps with brain swelling. And it's funny cause my dad called all of us adult children and, you know, updated us and don't come out. We don't know anything. Within 20 minutes, we all called each other. I just bought a plane ticket.
Keith Vance: Good for you.
Josie Hoffman: So we flew out to Colorado and we were there. Um, they kept the body cooled down for about 24 hours and then they start to warm it up. And it's about a six hour process to warm it up. And as they warmed Esther's body up, her heart just started having problems. And it became pretty clear that there, it wasn't, it wasn't a long-term sustainability. Um, my sister at the time was a critical care nurse. She'd worked in open heart recovery for years. So she was very in tune with physical, watching things on the heart monitor, you know, all that stuff. And Esther's heart just wasn't tolerating things. And so, um, my dad had to make the decision cause he was her legal guardian. We kind of all made it together to let Esther go. And that was probably one of the hardest decisions we've made, even though it was clearly the right decision. It's hard to let go. You know, she was young and, uh, we thought Esther was going to live a long time. She was very, very, very healthy. And I think that was hard for all of us because we'd all had such a different part in her upbringing. You know, I had been mom while I was a teenager and then she had my birth mom and then she had my step-mom who'd help care for her and my dad. And then my older sister had been in college. And that's how she had that. Also helped at times, you know, there's so many of us that had a part in Esther's life. It was almost like she had multiple parents, for lack of a better term. It was hard to let go of Esther. It's very hard. And I think the family was in a lot of shock because she was young and we're trying to make sense of it. But, you know, God did a really cool thing at her service.
Keith Vance: Let's hear it.
Josie Hoffman: We did a memorial service for her at Eight Mile Historic Park, which is a park in Denver that has like they bring in the covered wagons and, you know, they have all the like that pioneer days stuff. And she loved there. And they would go and my stepmom, Flora, and her would get all dressed up and they'd go like in the period dress and they'd go and Esther loved it. So we called them and they were like, you can do a service here, you know. So we set up the service. We ordered Papa John's pizza, which is her favorite. And we had cupcakes there and we wanted it to be a joyous celebration. What was so neat about Esther's service is because she had loved everybody in the community and she was very well known in the special needs community. We had over 400 people at our service. And my parents' pastor was able to share the love of God, clear testimony of salvation. And we sang hymns. We talked about God, you know. And through Esther's death, we had an opportunity to impact all those people and be a blessing to all those people and share all the memories of Esther. And I never wanted to lose a sister, obviously. And I think it was really hard on my parents because they thought Esther was going to be there forever. You know, they had never intended Esther to grow up and move out because she wasn't, you know. But yet to have the opportunity to impact all those lives, you don't get that opportunity very often. So that was like the blessing in it.
Crosstalk: I have a cousin. Her name was Rhonda.
Crosstalk: Hearing you talk about your sister. Whew. Yeah. Lots of emotions. It's almost like you're talking about my cousin, Rhonda. Yeah.
Crosstalk: She drug around an oxygen tank.
Keith Vance: She wasn't supposed to live past like the age of 20 or something like that. She lived to be, I think she was 50 when she died. Wow. She died a couple years ago. Wow. My uncle, Ron, said that in regard to children with Down syndrome or people with Down syndrome, as long as God's passing them out, I'll take as many as he wants to give me because she was so special.
Josie Hoffman: Yes, they are. And it makes me sad that people don't value their lives, to be honest.
Keith Vance: They have a way of living life to the max. Yes. They have a life of not being intimidated by anybody else with their love or their emotions. They're just, in a way you kind of envy them the way that they're built because they're just enjoying life every day. And your sister, I get the impression that at the age of 24, she probably lived harder than someone who lives in their 70s like a normal person who's afraid of what somebody's going to think about me. Or should I, you know, like those people with Down syndrome, man, they just, their love is on full volume. Yes, it is. It's on full volume with everyone. Yep. And similar with my cousin, Rhonda, I made an impromptu visit to Michigan.
Keith Vance: Made an impromptu visit to Michigan and I could tell her health was declining. I guess to spend some time with her. And then in a few short months, she had declined. But the family got together and the same thing. They just, everybody got together and it wasn't a sad time. It was a happy time because how can you be sad when you're talking about Rhonda? I know. You know, how can you be sad talking about Rhonda and all this crazy stuff she did?
Josie Hoffman: It's such mixed emotions. You know what I mean?
Keith Vance: You fought, Hid. She used to tell people, you fought, Hid. My grandfather, you all fought. You all fought.
Josie Hoffman: Esther used to sit and go, where are we going? But she'd say, we're going. Go, oh, well, Esther, you know, we're busy. We're running my dad's business, going to school, doing the winter. We're going. We have to go to the store. We have to go get groceries. And then? Well, after that, we'll come home and we'll make dinner. And then? And then we'll have a bath and go to bed. And then? Yeah. And like, you know, she just keeps, she's excited about the next thing and very passionate. They're very passionate people. Very passionate people. Oh, thank you.
Keith Vance: My cousin, she had an addiction to Coke. And my, not that kind of Coke. And you're over there. Come on, man. I went there for a minute, too. Don't worry. Coca-Cola. Come on, man. But my family members, they would have to like, if they ever got one, they'd pop the tab. They'd have to do it quietly because she had ears from across the house. I know. And she would, Coke? Coke? Like, she would like, yeah, you had to hide them from her.
Josie Hoffman: Esther loved any carb. She never would say no to any carb in her entire life. Macaroni and cheese, bread, Cheetos. Like, yeah. She loved them. And she got really good at being like, sneaky about taking second helpings, you know. Or one of my favorite stories about Timmy and Esther. Because they got to be buddies. You know, they're 15 months apart. They're both special needs. They're the ones going back and forth between houses, you know. So they got to be buddies. I'm running through the house the one afternoon. I can't find them. I know they're somewhere. Because we had to add locks to the doors. That's a different discussion. So I know they're in the house. I know they're in the house somewhere. I can't find them anywhere. And keep in mind, at the time, neither one of them can walk. No. Because neither one of them walked until a little bit later. Okay. And I walk in the kitchen and you can hear something. And I stop. And they'd gotten into the pantry and pulled the bifold doors closed. And gotten the graham crackers off the cabinet. Yeah. And gotten the package open. Yeah. And were just eaten away. Yeah. They'd been in there probably 45 minutes. Because the whole box of graham crackers was empty. You know. They were buddies. They just, they knew they had to pull that door shut. So nobody could see they were in there. You know. But you could hear them munching. They did that. They, I walked in the kitchen the one time. And Tim had Esther on his shoulder. Getting up on the counter. Into the cookie jar. You know. Can't walk. We can get those cookies off the counter. You know. That's what we want in life. That's what we can have. So. But it works both ways. Like. Tim was so gracious to her. And Esther was so ornery sometimes. He smashed his thumb in the car door. You know. Like everybody's probably done once in their lifetime. And she discovered for the next two or three weeks. If she wanted what Tim had. The toy. The food. Whatever. She'd just grab his thumb. Uh oh. Of course she'd drop whatever he had. And she's like. I know what I'm doing. I'm just. You know. She knew what she wanted. She was going to do everything she could to get it. You know. They're. They're very creative children. They're not. They might not have that high intelligence. But they're determined. And they're going to figure out what they want. And how they're going to get it.
Keith Vance: So the determination. Yes. My. Again. My cousin. One of the last trips we were up there. We got together. We had a bunch of food. And like everybody brought some. Desserts or whatever. And there was somebody brought some brownies or something. My daughter Brooke will be able to tell the story better. But she went around. She had her dessert. What she was allowed to by her mom. But then she went to everybody and said hey. I need. I need a brownie. I didn't have one yet. She's making around. And then she got the Brooke. She got the Brooke. And Brooke. She said hey. I need a brownie. Are you allowed to have one? Just don't tell anybody. It'll be our secret. Like. She was like. Trying to buddy up. I know what we're going to get. She tried to buddy up to somebody. To get. Like. To manipulate. She would manipulate. To get her Cokes. And to get her. Her cookies and brownies. But. Anyway. It's a good memory.
Josie Hoffman: Esther loved to have her picture taken. When we got. My husband and I got married in 2003. We got those disposable cameras. And like spread them out in the reception. At least a third of the pictures. Are Esther. Because she'd go up to everybody. You know. Take my picture. It's kind of fun. I have them now. You know. I have all those pictures now.
Keith Vance: Maybe God. Put people like that in our lives. To help us with our perspective. Because we're prone towards. Pedal to the middle. And just keep living for tomorrow. And just keep pursuing. But we need. We need. They make you live in the moment. But.
Josie Hoffman: They do. They make you live in the moment. And like you said. They make you pause. Yeah. And slow down. She used to go. Esther. We have to hurry. She'd go. Hurry. Yes Esther. I need you to hurry. We got to get to church. We got to get to school. Hurry.
Keith Vance: Yeah. What's that?
Josie Hoffman: Yes Esther. I need you to hurry. Hurry. And then she'd go. Hurry now. Yes Esther. I need you to hurry. We got to get dressed. We got to go here. And she'd go. Now now. Now. We got to go here. We got to go here. We got to go here. We got to go here. We got to go here. We got here. We got here. We got here. Yes, now, now.
Keith Vance: You talked about your dad moving to Denver, lost his job. He ended up working at irrigation, landscaping, that kind of stuff. Your parents are divorced, and you're living with your dad. And you talked about, in the open, you talked about your work ethic that you got from your dad. Can we talk about that a little bit? Sure. You and your dad working side by side. What was that like? A lot of times. Let's walk through that a little bit. Because you attribute it to your success where you're at now in life. A lot of that kind of stuff. It's a hard thing, what you talked about, your parents being divorced. But those things shape us. They do. And a lot of those things that we wouldn't want to live back or we wouldn't choose for ourselves have a way of turning out the way we're built that is a positive. Not always does things turn out to be a positive, but in your story it did. So let's hit that one for a little while.
Josie Hoffman: My dad's always been, I guess, a typical red-blooded American man. You know, like, drive. You got to do this. Whatever they're focused on, which is good. I think God wired them like that. They can stay very committed to one thing, which is good. He wanted to grow that business. I remember as kids we used to pass out flyers on Saturday mornings, you know, to all the neighborhoods trying to grow his business. And we used to have, like, a stack. And we'd have to get through the stack. And then we'd be done. And so I will admit as children, sometimes we doubled up flyers indoors. You know, oh, yeah, we're out, Dad. We're out of flyers. But and then we'd work with Dad. So when we were little, we'd go get parts from the truck. We'd go get tools from the truck. You know, we didn't do a lot of the manual labor. And then as we got older, Dad, without any hesitation, just put us to work. In fact, he'd drop us off at jobs and go to other jobs and come back. Once he knew we were capable, you know, he made sure we were properly trained. One of the things I always love about my dad growing up is my dad didn't expect anything from you that he didn't do. We're going to work till sundown and with a flashlight sometime. Dad's going to work till sundown with a flashlight sometime. You know, Dad never. Dad always set a good example of his work ethic. You got to get it done. It is a seasonal business. It's from like mid-March to mid-November. And you run. You run hard.
Keith Vance: Because winter's coming. Got it.
Josie Hoffman: And they shut them off in the winter because in Colorado it does get cold. You don't have that here. But the systems will freeze. So you actually winterize them every fall. Got it. So we would open them in the spring. You'd work all summer on repairs and then close them in the fall. You know, and he built quite a client base. I actually, when we were married, I was still helping my dad. He'd send me his customers and I put it all in an Excel database for him. And I'd print it and send it to him because my dad doesn't do computers. And he'd have his, you know, computer record or his printout with him. He had at one time probably over 2,000 customers. He's just running hard, running big. He tried to train a couple guys to help him grow the business. And they'd work for him for like a year. And then they'd leave and start their own business. So, you know.
Keith Vance: That's the hard part. You know what I mean? Sometimes you're just training your competition. Yeah.
Josie Hoffman: Now, on the flip side, my dad might have been a little difficult to work with. He expects a lot, you know. So I can't say as an adult that I would have chosen to work with him. I don't know. But whatever. But we tell stories of, I remember as a teenager, I went on a job with him. I think I was 13 or 14. And we were busy. It was spring. We were trying to get all these jobs finished. We were working with flashlights at night, trying to just get these jobs finished. And my siblings hate this story. And I love to tell this story. And the guy made out the check at the end. He said to my dad, put an extra $50 on this. I want you to give it to your daughter. It was the hardest working teenager I've ever seen.
Keith Vance: That's a compliment.
Josie Hoffman: Yes. And I took it as I was just helping dad. I was just doing what dad wants to do. Sure. You know, whatever. Of course, I didn't go home and share the story with my siblings. And my sister still hates it because she's like, I never got a tip. And I said, well, maybe you weren't working hard enough. Which, of course, breeds a lot of sibling rivalry. But dad taught us to work hard. Dad also taught us to do the best that we could. My dad always put in the highest quality parts, put the best job into the labor. He did not cut corners. He never was the cheapest guy because he always put in high quality everything. And I knew that.
Keith Vance: I'm glad you said that because, man, that's so good. Because had he rationalized trying to make, putting a few extra bucks in his pocket, it would not have been good for him because he has children who are watching him. That's right. And it would have affected you. So here you have a man of integrity. Yes. And not only are you learning to work hard, but you're learning to have integrity in your dad. It's just doing what your dad does. Had he compromised himself, that would have potentially damaged you and how you perceive.
Josie Hoffman: Dad always used to tell us, you're representing the family name. Don't embarrass me. In a good way. He wasn't me. But you're also representing God. People know you're a Christian. And people need to know that God wants the best we can give, the best we can give other people. You never know who you're going to encounter. You never know who's watching you. You never know that. And growing up in my dad's business, I learned a lot, like I said, about integrity, about really hard work. When my parents finalized the divorce, my dad had to pay my mom for half the house, half the value of his business, and pay her alimony and child support. Because she was a stay-at-home mom before they got divorced. So financially, that was a lot of money. We'll put it that way. You know, especially in retrospect, it wasn't like millions of dollars. So my dad had to work hard to make up for that. And also, he's the only one working, like I said. So I also learned things from my dad. Like, he had appendicitis. And I went to the hospital. This was before I could drive. I went to the hospital with him. He had the emergency surgery. And the next day, he was back at work. Because jobs had to be done. That's it. Probably not the most prudent decision for his health. He was... But he had to get it done. He had to.
Keith Vance: How old is your dad now?
Josie Hoffman: So my dad is 76. 70. Yeah. So that's... 78. He's 78.
Keith Vance: That's indicative of that... Yes. ...that generation. It is. So a couple things. You said that your dad, like, couldn't... Like, people worked for him for about a year and then started their own thing. Mm-hmm. That generation, and even myself, it took me a long time to figure this out, was that their way of thinking is the only right way to do it is my way. Yes. Because that's the way that works for me. Yes. And I didn't come to the conclusion here last 10 years that there's multiple ways to get it done. There are. And as long as it gets done and it gets done right, what do I care if you did it this way or that way or zigzag it? I don't care as long as it gets done and it's production. Yeah. Everybody's mind is different. So I had a hard time retaining good employees in the very beginning because if you don't do it exactly just like me with intensity of me, then you just, you must not care.
Josie Hoffman: That's my dad. He used to always say, I can't fire you, but you can't quit. Mm-hmm. Which is true. You know, now, I worked very hard in my dad's business, but I never had to pay for anything either. I drove his vehicles. He didn't make me pay for gas or car insurance or anything like that. He put me through college. You know, so I think I came out ahead. I didn't get paid much while I was working for him, but I think I came out ahead. And it was very much like everybody contributes. Everybody helps. It's a family unit. We all help when we can. And we ran the house that way. You know, like I said, I did a lot of the shopping and the cleaning and this, that and the other, but everybody helped. Everybody pick up the vacuum if it needed or do the dishes if there are dishes in the sink. You know, it was very much a team effort. I guess my dad definitely taught me that. Don't ask of people what you're not willing to do. And I think that's, that's another good lesson that, um, like you, you know, you can't ask your guys to work 40 hours a week if you're working 20 hours a week. It's, it's not really the way that, you know, this doesn't make sense. And I, that's one thing I've always appreciated about my dad is that, and then my dad always, always, always made time for church, church events. We used to work honestly, 60, 70 hour weeks in the summer. Cause that's when you were busy. Always went to church on Sunday. Always went to youth activities. He always made sure I got off for teen camp. He, we went on missions trips, you know, so we were busy and we worked really hard, but God was always a priority to my dad. Always a priority. And I think that balance is sometimes what's missing in life. Um, is we, we throw ourselves all into one thing, whether it be a secular job or a church ministry or a nonprofit, a secular nonprofit or whatever. And we forget that there's balance in life.
Keith Vance: You know, that's a good point. Yeah. Stay in balance is hard, especially when you're busy.
Crosstalk: It is hard. It's still hard. Um, Michael, how deep are we? Uh, just over an hour.
Keith Vance: Let's go and take a break. Sure. When we come back, you're talking about how hard you worked. You're talking about your special needs siblings that you took care of, but you also had some health issues yourself. You had some degenerative in your knees, some of your car. Like, so, so let's make that transition, talk about some of the health challenges that you had. Yeah. And we'll just kind of like continue to plot this thing out and work our way through it. Okay. You feel good? Sounds good. You're doing good, girl. All right. This part of the podcast is brought to you by Boots and Bubbles. This is a special one for me, man. It's my two girls, 15 and 17. Boots and Bubbles specialize in Southern-style dirty sodas, an alternative to Uriglo boring soda. If you're in the Lee County area and you want to book them for an event, find the link in the bio. In the meantime, let's get back to the show. All right. We're back. We're back. So we can't continue the conversation without talking about the health challenges that you had as a teenager. So we're talking about all this hard work that you did with your dad, taking care of your special needs siblings, all that. But you had some physical stuff going on with you as well during all this that you haven't even brought up yet. Yeah. So let's hit that layer.
Josie Hoffman: Sure. So when I was 13, I started having pain in my knee and, you know, I was born and raised to just push through, walk it off. You know that phrase. And it bothered me enough where my dad finally decided, let's go have a doctor look at it. Also being self-employed, my dad didn't have the greatest insurance. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't the greatest. It was Kaiser, which has improved a lot. But back then it was an HMO and it takes four months to get into a specialist and things. So finally got in and they did an MRI and they said, she seems to be missing parts of her cartilage. She literally has holes in her cartilage in her knee. You know, did she have an injury? Did she? And my dad said, well, you know, she's always been rough and tumble, playing with the boys, you know, working hard in the sprinklers, but no specific injury. So, um, they scheduled me for a knee surgery at 14. They actually went in and I had holes in my cartilage and they determined that some autoimmune genetic, something or other that I was born with where the cartilage actually peeled like an onion. So it would just eventually get down to bone. So I was bone on bone and parts of my knee. So, um, it was actually one of the first people in the area to get, it was this new procedure. Well, the first knee surgery was go in, clean it up, look at it, see what it looks like. You know? So January, I just turned 14. I had my first knee surgery and thought, this will clean it up. This is, you know, not a big deal. And they told my dad, I don't know, it looks kind of iffy in there, but we, we probably got most of it. You know what I'm saying? Not knowing how severe the issue was. Well, I went through very minimal rehab. Um, fun fact, three days after my surgery, my brother fell on my knee. That was a fun experience. I was like, what are we doing anyway? Uh, and I started having pain again. So they did another MRI and more of the cartilage had just eroded. So, um, a year later, so it'd be January when I had just turned 15, that they did a pretty innovative new procedure. It's actually a cartilage transplant. They take cartilage from the outside of your knee and they put it where I had the hole. It's called an oats procedure. So I had that done. And then, um, a year after that, so I had a knee surgery every year for five years. So, and they were always in the winter, you know, off season.
Keith Vance: It was because your little worker can't be, I don't, can't, I need you working.
Josie Hoffman: You got to just power through. Um, and then my junior year in high school is when like, it was kind of the crazy year. Um, that was actually the year that they did, uh, it's called a lateral release. They actually cut through all the ligaments and tendons on the outside of the knee. And then you're in a brace while it heals. So it shifts over and it retracts everything. And I had that in January. I was non-weight bearing for eight weeks. And then I was in the middle of rehab for that in April. And I somehow broke, um, a little tiny bone in my hand. I don't know how I broke it. It's very, very active teenager. And, you know, I was working full time. So it could have been something I did at work. Thumb was bothering me. Thought I had sprained it. My dad took me to urgent care after work that night and they said, it's broken. And my dad goes, it's broken. You know, cause I didn't have a clear injury. So they casted me for eight weeks. Cause it's a, it's a hard to heal bone. And the next day I was in a car accident and a guy hit me and I fractured across my left hand. So from April until the end of May, I had my hands in casts, both hands in casts, two different sets of doctors. That was the fun part. Cause this was medical insurance and this was car insurance. And, uh, you know, so that was the adventure that I had my junior year. And then my senior year, I was in another car accident. Somebody hit me and it damaged my right knee. So that's the one knee surgery I had that's related to an injury. And then my freshman year in college, I'd have another knee surgery, um, 10 days before I went back for my second semester of school. Okay. So I was on crutches for the first four and a half weeks of the semester at college.
Keith Vance: Okay. That's a lot of health stuff.
Josie Hoffman: That is a lot of health stuff.
Keith Vance: So let's just kind of deconstruct this. Sure. How did you feel as a child going through all that? And then like looking back now, your perspective of where you are as an adult, looking back, was there anything that you learned through that process? So let's look at it from two angles. In real time as a kid. And then looking back.
Josie Hoffman: I think as a kid, at times I did get discouraged because I was like, oh my God, again, I have to do this again. And then other times I was like, hmm, this is a challenge. How fast can I bounce back this time? You know, you kind of go with it. I think a lot of times. Your brain adapts. It does.
Keith Vance: Your brain, like you got to figure it out. You can't just stop. Like your brain adapts to certain things to make it make sense and to keep going.
Josie Hoffman: And also, I think I've tried to always have the perspective or personality. And I don't want to give the illusion that I never struggle with things, but also I can't change it. My dad used to always say, you can't change what happens to you. You can't change what people do to you, but you can change how you react to them.
Keith Vance: That's a good lesson. Yeah. So hold on a minute. I wonder how he came to that conclusion through events in his life that he had to figure out. So there's, that's good. That's a good.
Josie Hoffman: He had a very abusive alcoholic dad. Okay. And I think he learned a lot about reaction. So.
Keith Vance: It's interesting how the bad, the so-called bad things that touch our lives, we can take those lessons learned and pass down good advice to our kids. I would say that's good advice that probably helped you.
Josie Hoffman: It did. And I've tried to teach my kids that, you know, and also like my kids will get this jumping to now, but my kids will get frustrated with something that happens at school or with a friend or whatever. And they'll tell me the story and you know what? Sometimes it's really bad stuff that happens to them. I mean, everybody has challenges in life. And I always say, I hear you and I agree with you. And that's a really bad situation, but you can't change it. You can change what you do with it and you can change how you react to it because we can't change what people do. We can't change, you know, what people are going to say, what are they going to do or what happens to us? I mean, I was in two car accidents 12 months apart in high school. Like that's not fair. You know, you can play that game all the time, but what do you do with it? And like I said, I don't want to give the illusion that I always react properly, but I try to, I try to have that perspective.
Keith Vance: That's, we could probably stop the podcast right here with that because that translates to like real life stuff and that's easier said than done. But when you can do that kind of stuff and keeps your mind in a good place, keeps you out of bitterness, keeps you out of that vortex that tries to suck us into a bad place. That's, we'd probably need to clip that. It's good. That's powerful. Thank you for that one. That was good.
Josie Hoffman: So as a teenager, I did struggle. I did struggle a lot. I got really good at carrying things while on crutches and I had a buddy in high school. He was my pastor's son that had reconstructive knee surgery and we used to race each other down the sidewalk squares. We used to see who could go the longest without putting their feet down. Like we just had fun with it. You know, like just have fun with it. Um, I went through, I think seven sets of crutch tips during all my, all my injuries. Sounds about right. Yeah.
Keith Vance: You don't slow down.
Josie Hoffman: I don't slow down. It's kind of a bad habit. Yeah. However, God did teach me. There are times you have to rest.
Keith Vance: Let's hear it.
Josie Hoffman: You just have to sit. You just have to sit and rest. And I am not good at that. I am a very driven go-getter, conquer the world. Give me a challenge person. But you know, sometimes you have to stop and sit. And you, you asked me looking back now. Yeah. Um, I think that's what God was trying to teach me. I'm a very stubborn person. I think it took a lot of tries.
Crosstalk: You know, Still Strong.
Keith Vance: There's multi layers to that. Yeah. But the one layer, so still can be a continuation of still, like in my mind, links in a chain. Just because I was strong yesterday doesn't mean I'm strong today. If I don't do the same thing that I did yesterday to continue those links in those chain. Um, I could go for a month without going to the gym and you would never know. You would never know. I would know, but that's not being Still Strong. Those things that I do daily, physically, mentally, spiritually, to stay where I'm supposed to be. So there's that aspect of, to a continuation of. Right. The other aspect of still is what you just did. You know, that's what you just did. You know, that's what you just did. You know, that's what you just did. being still and knowing that he is God.
Josie Hoffman: That's one of my favorite verses.
Keith Vance: That is so hard. And that takes the second word, that takes strength to be still because every fiber of my being wants to get up and wants to be a call to action, wants to rock and roll with this thing. Let's get some production done. Let's do something. Being still is so hard. But what I've learned in that stillness is it's just not being still and not thinking about anything. It's focusing on what's important. Focusing on him.
Josie Hoffman: That's one of my favorite verses.
Keith Vance: Shutting down my own internal voice and letting his voice minister and speak to me.
Josie Hoffman: That's Psalm 4610, be still and know.
Keith Vance: So you've learned that verse because you just talked about sometimes I have to rest and be still.
Josie Hoffman: I think also when we can rest and be still, we're much more prone to talk to God. When we're busy doing what we want to do or doing it in our strength, we don't talk to God about it. We're doing it on our own. And, you know, a lot of times we can do it on our own, but I've learned most of the time. If I let God help me, I can always do it better. I can always do it better. Or I can do it with less effort or with less trauma, you know? And so sometimes if I am be still and know that I am God, if I can just take a step back, if I can sit and rest, if I can sit and think and pray, it always turns out better. And like I said, I'm a pretty stubborn person. So it took a lot of tries for God to teach me that. And I still have not perfected it. You know, at 46, I still struggle with it. But the B still, like you said, is so powerful. And I think we forget about it.
Keith Vance: When I was a kid, my dad's pastor, who he's been dead for several years now, he drowned in Costa Rica. But I remember hearing this, I was like 10 years old and I didn't understand it, but I understand it now. He was going through a trial and his wife said, do something, do something. And he said, I am doing something. I'm doing nothing. And that's what that's being still. I am doing something. Because to not do something takes strength. Because when you want to go do it, I am doing something. I'm doing nothing. I didn't understand what that meant at 10 years old, but I do now.
Josie Hoffman: The other thing that I think it taught me and my cancer journey, which we'll talk about, has taught me that more, it's okay to ask people for help. You know? Sometimes we're just like my dad. My dad loved my dad. I've talked very highly of him on this podcast. My dad's really bad about asking for help sometimes or letting people help. And you know what? When we let people help, that helps us. But sometimes it helps them. Sometimes they need to do that. That's what they need to do. And I think having times of physical challenges, like being on crutches or having a knee surgery or, you know, whatever, we have to let people help us. And that teaches us that, you know, it's okay to let people help us. We don't always have to do everything. We don't always have to be independent. We can let go. That's good. Yeah.
Keith Vance: I'm glad we talked about that one. Yeah. Well, let's do it, girl. Your cancer journey. Yeah. You were in college. And you had a tickle in your throat. Yeah. Let's go.
Josie Hoffman: So my junior year in college, it started right at the end of the semester. Actually, I had a crazy sore throat. I was trying to make it through to get home. You know, you're like, it's a college student. I just have to get home. I finally broke down and went to the ER because back then, like, insurance wasn't as portable, whatever you want to call it. So I couldn't just go to a doctor. The ER doctor said, I'm not even going to do a strep test. Strep test. That's the worst case of strep throat I've seen in my life. So he put me on an antibiotic, which was the right thing to do. Felt better. Finished up finals. Went home. Went back to work for my dad. You know, busy, busy, busy. And about 10 days later, the sore throat felt like there was like a scratch in my throat. Kind of came back. So I called my primary care. I also had growing up, I was very prone to strep throat and it never was gone with the first treatment. It always would take two treatments. And in fact, as a child, I often had to get penicillin injections. Those are fun. To get rid of strep throat. So I called him and I told him the situation. He just filled another script. I didn't even have to come in, you know, because he knew me. All didn't go away. And I was just like mid-May, end of May. He said, why don't you come in? Let me just look at you. So I came in. He's like, I don't see anything. You don't even look like you have a sore throat. You do. You do. Feel like there's something in your throat. And I said, yeah, I just feel like there's something in there. He goes, maybe it's just acid reflux. Had a lot of stress. You're a college student. There are other contributing stresses in my life, you know, whatever. Let's put you on like a PPI, NXIVM. Let's just see if that gets rid of it. He said, just try it for five days. See what happens. So took it for five days. Nothing. He goes, something's off. Let me schedule what's called an endoscopy, where they put a camera down your throat. Let's just look. Let's just see what it looks like. Maybe there's an irritation in there or something. I said, great. So this was on a Tuesday. It was scheduled for the following Monday. Well, as the week progressed, I couldn't even get food down. I could still drink liquids, but I couldn't even get food down. And I thought, well, that's really odd, but I've got the test scheduled next week. I'm not going to worry about it. So Friday morning, I wake up and I can't even get water down. Something's not right. This is a problem. So I called the office back. He called me right away. He goes, let's get you admitted to a hospital. We'll run some tests tomorrow instead of Monday. We've got to get to the bottom of this. You can't even get fluids down. I've got to get an IV in you. You know, we've got to figure this out. And that's another God story. He called every hospital in Denver. Every hospital. Could not find a bed. I don't know what was going on, but could not find an open bed. Except the last bed in all of Denver was at Porter Memorial Hospital, which is across town. It wasn't super convenient. But, you know, whatever. You do what you have to do. So I went, got admitted Friday night. Started an IV. Saturday morning, they do the endoscopy. And they sedate you. It's not full anesthesia, but they sedate you. I wake up. I'm back in my hospital room. I feel great. I'm eating soup. Because whatever they did, they fixed it. Life is great. Well, this doctor comes in. I don't know this doctor. But she traded on call with my normal doctor. You know, she goes, well, I have some news for you. It's, you know, kind of a little odd, difficult, you know, whatever. I can't remember exactly what she said. And I said, well, whatever you did, you fixed it. I'm eating now. I'm eating this bowl of soup, thinking life is great, you know. And she goes, well, we actually think we saw what the cause of it is. We think it's swollen lymph nodes pushing on your esophagus. We think you might have something called Hodgkin's disease.
Keith Vance: So when you said the significance of there was no hospital beds, but the one hospital that you were in.
Josie Hoffman: I'll get there. Yeah. There's a reason. So she said, we think you have Hodgkin's disease. And I'm like, what is that? 20 year old, 21 year old, healthy, ready to get engaged, ready to finish my senior year in college, whatever. She goes, it's cancer. Suddenly I wasn't hungry anymore. Suddenly I can't control my emotions. She's like, and she was very gracious. I'd never met the woman in my life. You know, I would not want to have to give somebody that news that I'd never met. But she goes, can I do anything for you? And I said, well, you're gonna have to call my dad because there's no way I'm going to get that out over the phone. She called my dad. They transferred me to the oncology floor from like the general floor. And I met the on-call doctor who was just walking through, you know, he's on call for oncology. He's the guy who's on that day. He works for the premier practice in all of Denver for Hodgkin's disease. And in fact, he has a very strong relationship with a doctor at Stanford, which is the top medical research facility for Hodgkin's lymphoma in the country. And next to Porter Memorial Hospital was Colorado Chematology Oncology, the biggest oncology hematology practice in all of Denver. And because I was in that hospital and he was the doctor on call, I got the best doctor in Denver that I could have ever gotten for my cancer. And just because that was the only bed that was left in all of Denver, which is pretty cool the way that works.
Keith Vance: So when you go down that rabbit hole, when you go down that rabbit hole, and I'm sure you've been there, but
Keith Vance: God puts things in our lives bigger than us to make us dependent on him. And then he creates these random scenarios to prove that he's got us. And the purpose is to grow our faith so that we can share stories like this and make him look big. And it's that someone else is listening to this. It's going to be okay. Yeah. It's going to be okay. That's how God works. It's crazy.
Josie Hoffman: The other random God story associated with that weekend, my husband was a year ahead of me in college. We both went to the same college. That's how we met. And he was graduating with a degree in accounting. He interviewed me. interviewed at so many different firms. He was, let me back up. He lived out in South Central Pennsylvania. Of course, I was in Colorado. He'd interviewed at firms in DC, which is an hour and a half from his house. He'd interviewed at banks, could not get a job, could not get a job. So he went back home, living with his parents and worked a construction job just to make ends meet, you know, trying to figure out what to do with life. So he didn't have a job. Well, also the weekend I was diagnosed that Saturday night. He just happened to be out in Indianapolis, Indiana at his cousin's wedding, which was an hour and a half from my sister's house in South Bend, Indiana. And when I got that news on Saturday night, of course, my dad called my sister. They reached out to Kevin because Kevin was going to get together with them sometime and said, Josie is cancer. Do you want to drive out to Denver with me? Cause I'm going to drive out to Denver and you can just come with me cause you're right here. You have a suitcase packed of clothes. So because he was right there in Indianapolis, he could drive out and he spent two weeks with me while I had the rest of my testing, which we'll talk about and all that. And then he flew back home after two weeks and two days later, he got a job. It's crazy. But if he would have just started a job, he couldn't have taken off two weeks, you know? So what didn't make sense in the time that he couldn't get a job made a lot of sense when I got that diagnosis.
Keith Vance: And again, it goes back to why it's so important to be still sometimes. Just be still and accept that this is just, this is the situation and you don't have to force anything. That's good. It's hard to do though.
Josie Hoffman: It is so hard to do.
Keith Vance: All right. I'm going to let you keep, I'm going to let you navigate the, this part of the story.
Josie Hoffman: So this is Saturday night that moved me to the oncology floor and they said, Hodgkin's is, it's a, it's a pretty rare lymphoma. There's usually less than 9,000 cases in a year globally. It's a very rare lymphoma. It is the only good lymphoma in that it's pretty curable. However, it has to be treated very, very aggressively and it's quick. It's a fast spreading situation. So they had a surgeon come talk to me and I didn't even realize it, but I had a lymph node right here at my collarbone that was swollen and you could feel it. I hadn't even noticed it. Nobody had noticed it. So the surgeon said we can biopsy that one. Even though we think the affected area is more right here, we can biopsy this one. It's easy to get to. That's how you get the definitive diagnosis. So Sunday morning, like I said, everything's moving fast. Sunday morning, they do the biopsy. They take out the lymph node and they said, well, the results in two days, you know, and then we'll know, and we, we know where to go from there. So, um, in the meantime, Kevin came out with my sister. Everybody's trying to figure out what's going on. This is June. So my dad's pretty busy still with his business, you know, trying to navigate that he had gotten remarried when I was 18 and her first husband died of cancer. So I think emotionally it was pretty trying for her, which I can't imagine going through that, you know, so she's, she's trying to be supportive, but I'm sure she's dealing with all of her own emotions or three boys are trying to deal with their emotions, you know, and whatever. So, um, Tuesday I knew I was going to get the results and, uh, I knew what the results were before they told me, cause my dad showed up in the middle of the day. My dad didn't quit work in the middle of the day for anything.
Keith Vance: Your dad don't stop. I like your dad.
Josie Hoffman: My dad does not stop.
Keith Vance: I like that guy. So I knew when my dad showed up, you knew something's up.
Josie Hoffman: I knew something was up and I'm sure they had called him and said, you know, this is the, this is the results we'd like to share them with her. You know, can you make it for lack of a better term? So he came and they said to me, this is what came back in the biopsy. You do have Hodgkin, Hodgkin's lymphoma. I'd also done some other scans by then they discovered it was behind my sternum and a little bit up here and then above my collarbone. So the thing that's unique about lymphomas is you can't just take out all the lymph nodes. That's your immune system. So you have to treat it and then, you know, just see what happens from there. And like I said, because it's part of the immune system, it has to be treated pretty aggressively. Um, so they want to get on top of it. They want to do things quickly and you know, you hit the ground running. So I had the diagnosis on Tuesday and they said, um, actually, if you're ready, the next step would be to do a bone biopsy to make sure it does not spread to your bones. Um, they do that in the upper crest of the hip. And so they, they do both hips at the same time. And the first, the first side was fine. You feel a lot of pressure, but they had numbed it. Well, I also inherited this other thing from my dad where Novocaine doesn't always work. So when they went to do the second side, I could feel it. And I don't know if anybody gets squeamish. The needle for a bone myobiopsy is about as big as a straw. So it's a pretty big needle they have to put in the, across the lip. So we tried to numb it again and it still didn't work. And the fourth time I just looked at the doctor and I said, just do it.
Keith Vance: You poor thing.
Josie Hoffman: And he goes, are you serious? I said, just do it. Like, I'm so stressed. I was drenched in sweat. I was all stressed out about it. He goes, okay, it's fast. You know, I knew it was going to be fast. I tell people I've had five knee surgeries. I've actually had two hip surgeries. I've had two C-sections. And that bone myobiopsy is the most painful thing I've ever had. They go into the crest of your hip, which is pretty strong. So I did that.
Keith Vance: It's funny, but here's the thing. It's funny how your brain can adapt when it has to get it done. I can't imagine that.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah. But in the moment, you just.
Keith Vance: But in the moment, there's no way out. So we got to go through it.
Josie Hoffman: They actually sedate people now most of the time for bone myobiopsy, which I'm glad they do. Because it's an experience. I love watching medical shows. I cannot watch that.
Keith Vance: I don't blame you.
Josie Hoffman: Whenever they do that, I just have to change the channel. My husband's like, but you've done that. And I said, yeah, that's why I can't watch that. Wow. So they did that Tuesday.
Keith Vance: And here's another thing. Yeah. You women, you guys are built for pain. Like.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah, we kind of. Ooh.
Keith Vance: I'm so glad God made you guys give birth and not us. Because we would. There would be no population. You girls are built for. To withstand some pain. You guys got a high pain tolerance. Yes, we do. And I applaud all of you. My goodness, man.
Josie Hoffman: I'm really good with pain if I know there's a definitive end. Like. You know, it's going to last for. The two minutes of the bone myobiopsy or it's going to last for your six weeks in recovery. It's going to last when it's undefined. That's when I struggle with pain. But I don't know. Sometimes it gets me in trouble because I probably should listen to my body more. So they did the biopsy Tuesday. I had another couple tests Wednesday and Thursday. I had a series of scans. They wanted to make sure my heart was healthy. They didn't make sure my lungs were good. I did. Fun fact. The colonoscopy prep. You know that people do. I did that three times in one week. Because I would do a test and then they'd have to clear out my immune. My digestive system for another test. And then they. And. So. I.
Keith Vance: So that process. Because I did it once because I'm 50. Yeah. And so. I found out you're supposed to start paying attention to that stuff. So I had it done once. And you're talking about where you drink the liquid. Like you can't eat. You drink the liquid. And it's just. Your stomach. And you're in the bathroom constantly. Your stomach is just. Yes. That was hard to do. Yes. Well also the taste of that stuff. Like it was hard to get that down.
Josie Hoffman: Yes. Well I had. After cancer. I had. CT scans. Every three months for three years. And you have to drink a barium contrast for that type of CT scan. I can drink. I can eat anything. My kids are always like. Mom how can you. I'm like. Not a big deal. It was really great when we work with teenagers. Because you know how they make that concoction drinks. And then they dare each other. Yeah. Yeah. These teenage guys were doing it. They put like. Honey and hot sauce. And. They put like. Eight or ten things in this thing of soda. And they're all daring each other. And they said. Miss Josie. What about you? I said. I'll drink it. What do you give me? And they're like. Like you won't drink that. And I said. Oh just you watch me. And I just drank it down. And I could see the one guy out of the corner of my eye. And he goes. And I was like. This is nothing. This is nothing. This is nothing compared to. Stuff. So. So I had. More scans. Um. They discharged me on Thursday. So I'd been in the hospital almost a week. And then on Friday. I went to the oncologist office. And did prep work. The following Tuesday. I got a port in. Um. The chemo that I had. Fun fact with the chemo I had. They can't put it in down here. Because your vein walls are too thin. It will eat through your vein walls. So you either get a chest port. Or I was lucky enough to get an arm port. It goes in the arm. It also gives them really good access. IV access. Um. So I had that done on Tuesday. And I started chemo the next Wednesday. So between. So this.
Keith Vance: This moved fast.
Josie Hoffman: 10 days. Wow. And in those 10 days. Um. So. Go ahead.
Keith Vance: Um. Again. I just. I just have to. Digest this. And try to fit my feet in your shoes. Yeah. That 10 days sounds like a whirlwind to me. It was. Did you ever. in the middle of a, have disbelief or feel like this is a dream or this isn't really happening to me? Do you ever feel like this is like, where am I at?
Josie Hoffman: Like, how did, like, how did I get here?
Keith Vance: How did I get here? And I, and I, and I, it's very sobering at 21.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah. To look at your mortality. And I think we all know, we all know we're going to die. I mean, we know that that's obvious, but you don't think about that at 21. No. And I was at a stage in my life where I was about ready to finish my senior year in college. It's about ready to get engaged. I was about ready to move on with the rest, like start the rest of my life, you know? And I did struggle with things like, you know, everybody wants to say, oh, I handled it well. I did have times when I struggled. I, I questioned God. I'll admit it because I'm like, God, why me? Like, what did I do? What have I done? I have all these plans and now I have to just wait again. Now I have to just be patient again. Like why me? And I remember even thinking like, why not one of my friends at college who's the same age, like they're not ready to get married. They're not ready to, you know what I'm saying? And not that I would wish that on anybody, but I did struggle. I'm like, what in the world? Like I'm ready to start my life and okay, now you got to just wait. And my husband and I, we were not engaged at, but we were pretty close. Um, we had to make decisions like, are we going to try and preserve my fertility? Are we going to, you know, because chemo is, it's extremely toxic. Um, the chemo that I had three of the four are probably one of the strongest ones that you can get. And that's what causes the long-term health issues that I have. Um, but they need that to discover or to, to treat the cancer.
Keith Vance: How many chemo treatments did you have?
Josie Hoffman: So I had four different chemo drugs, every treatment, and I had six treatments. I had it every two weeks. Um, you'd go in on Wednesday, it was about a three and a half hour infusion. And then I'd start to feel pretty cruddy that night through Sunday, Monday, and then you'd have a, about a good week where you start to recover and then you go back again.
Keith Vance: You know, was there ever a time you went in for chemo? You just didn't want to go? Oh, absolutely. Cause I've heard stories like my, um, my father-in-law, he died of cancer. My, my wife was his caregiver. She took him to all his treatments.
Josie Hoffman: You have to knowingly poison yourself to get better for the future.
Keith Vance: He would beg her towards the end, please don't make me do this. And she got a wheel him in there. Yeah. I got another friend that I'm having on the podcast. He talks about his chemo treatments. He talks about the fourth man in the fire. He said, because Keith, I did not want to do this. Like it was, it was like, please don't. It was like going to torture every, every day. So just curious, like, what did that feel like? After you felt it the first time knowing I got to go six more times? Like how did your brain adapt? Like, how did you gear up for battle? To get in there and get it done?
Josie Hoffman: I tell people I could, I don't think I could ever do chemotherapy again. Unless I knew that there was a fairly positive outcome on the other side, you know, and honestly, it's a very personal choice that when people are diagnosed with cancer, if they do treatment or not. And you know, the people that are in their seventies, eighties, they've lived a full life, man, I get that choice not to do it. Really? I do. And I'm not, I'm not saying it's a right or wrong choice because it's a very, very, very personal choice. Um, but it was a pretty miserable three or four months cancer treatment. I, um, when I would have treatment on Wednesday, between Wednesday and Sunday or Monday, I would probably sleep 19, 20 hours a day. I, huge gaps in my memory, um, slept on the bathroom floor four or five times. Um, and you, you make associations with things. I'm one of the people that I could taste the chemo, which is kind of weird. And so the people, the oncology nurses, which were amazing, I commend them so much for what they do. We're like, well, you can, you can bring anything you want in. You know, they didn't care if you ate or drank, but they said, just to warn you, whatever you bring in, you might not ever be able to have again. So I tried to pick things that were like really strong, but I wasn't super attached to them. Um, so this day I cannot have hot tamales, like the candies. I cannot have lemon heads. And I don't even like lemon, most things, lemon in general, because it's that honestly, that association. And to this day, it's now been 20, what, 25 years. It's 25 years. this year. When I get an IV for the 73 medical procedures I have all the time, you have to warn me before you flush it because I will vomit on the spot from that taste, that association, this long out, this long out. The body does make its own, you know, they talk about muscle memory. There's other memories. Like you can, you feel it and it does become a very, very, very mental battle. It's strong. You kind of get to know the guys that sit next to you for infusion because you usually end up the same time. You get to know the nurses, you know, you get to know the people who draw your labs, you, you get to know stuff like that, but it's, it's, it is a journey. And I think one of the things that was also really hard for me was this was before Facebook and support groups and whatever. I didn't know anybody at 21 who had cancer. I know anybody. Cancer is what old people got, you know, or, um, like not to be judgmental, but people who made poor life choices, you know, later on in life and, and things. And I was like, I don't know, a single 20 year old, 21 year old that had cancer. And then of course, um, lost my hair. That's very emotional for me. Um, yeah.
Keith Vance: The Bible talks about a woman's hair being her glory, like a woman's identity in her hair. Like those two things are connected. Like a man's strength is his identity, a woman's beauty in her hair, which is her beauty.
Josie Hoffman: I had long hair like this. I've always had long hair my whole life. And, uh, I lost all of it, which was also very hard because I wanted to get married the next year, you know, kick away your head that fast in one year.
Keith Vance: Was this, was this probably the lowest point in your life at this point? Probably. You always said you're pretty optimistic. Yeah. Are you still optimistic? But I struggled. You struggled. I struggled. Can we just talk about those struggles? Yeah. Let's just hit a few of them.
Josie Hoffman: I felt very lonely. You know, I can see that. Um, my husband was out here and was out in Pennsylvania. I was out in Colorado and this is pre cell phone era, you know, so we couldn't talk all the time. Um, but I, I felt very isolated. I felt like my whole life was put on hold. Okay. And that was very, very hard for me because I had plans. I had things I wanted to do.
Keith Vance: Every 21 year old does.
Josie Hoffman: Um, you know, my dad, when he got remarried, it was a, how do I say this diplomatically? A quick decision. And so families were thrown together and two strong personalities were thrown together. And the first couple of years of their marriage was not super fun for anybody. We'll put it that way. I was ready to be done with that. You know, I was ready to move on and, and not have to deal with trauma. I had a lot of trauma as a teenager with, with my parents' divorce and then my other health issues and whatever. And I did have moments of like, why me? Like, haven't I done enough? Haven't I struggled enough? Haven't I suffered enough? Like, why me? Like, you know, and I did struggle with that. And I did. And you come back to the promises of God and I come back to, um, I looked at Job. I looked at Joseph. I looked at, you're looking for answers. Yeah. And I just was like, I don't get it. God. Like, and I didn't question God in like, you hate me and you're not control. I questioned God in, I just don't get it. I don't understand. Like, I don't know why you have me doing this, you know? And, and I think sometimes we get in the middle of trials and we're like, okay, what do you want me to learn? So I can be done with this. You know, I had that moment. I had, um, I had a man say something to me that, um, you know, in the church you talk about sometimes the church can be judgmental. I think the church is amazing and I love my church, but sometimes people, I think speak their mind when they shouldn't, if that makes sense. I had a man come up to me in the middle of my treatment and say, you must have a really big sin in your life. If God gave you cancer at 21.
Keith Vance: Yeah.
Josie Hoffman: And, and, and that makes you evaluate things, you know, like, do I?
Keith Vance: Here's my judgmental coming out. I'm glad I don't know that guy. Yeah. Because if I had known him and you, that guy would be holding his mouth. He'd be holding his mouth.
Josie Hoffman: The comment caught me so off guard. That I just, I literally took a step back and, and I did evaluate and, you know, maybe I did have sin in my life. I don't know. I don't feel like I did. I think God gives suffering for a variety of reasons, but I did struggle on the sticker. I got with the chemo, the more I struggled.
Keith Vance: Um, can I make another interjection? Yes. In the middle of suffering, God's teaching us something.
Josie Hoffman: He's trying at least.
Keith Vance: But also in the middle of suffering, there's a warfare going on behind the scenes. You mentioned Job. Yeah. There was a conversation between God and the evil one. Yeah. And in suffering that's intended for our good and God's glory, there can be those satanic assaults against us where someone comes across and says, you must have a really big sin in your life. Yeah. Be careful what you talk about because you don't know your own heart. Right. You don't know if this is my own thought, God, the Holy Spirit's thought. Right. Or a satanic interjection that I'm being used as a pawn of the evil one to, you know what I mean? So be real careful with your, when someone's going through stuff, the words that come out of your mouth. Right. It happened with Job, all those guys sitting around there. Everybody's trying to figure them out and fix it. They all should have just kept their mouth shut.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah, they should have. But we all try to fix, right? Yeah.
Keith Vance: Yeah. I'm glad we weren't friends back then because I would have, I would have been in jail probably. I just don't get people sometimes.
Josie Hoffman: I don't either. Church is one of those places where it's given me so much strength and so many relationships and so much love. But yes, there are a couple people in church that, and I know you did a podcast on recently and one of the things you said is, you know, God didn't hurt you and the church didn't hurt you. It's individuals, you know, and that's true. That's very true. But sometimes I do look at what people say and go, really? Yeah. Did you think about that before you said that?
Keith Vance: That person was not a representation of God. I would agree. Something totally different.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah. In the moment I did evaluate and struggle. I think everybody struggles when they go through times of suffering. Good question. In different levels. I think they do. And I think it causes us to reevaluate our relationship with God, our relationship with others. And I can tell you, Cancer at 21 taught me a lot about what's important to my life. You know, does it really matter? Does it really matter? What matters? Like what, what really matters?
Keith Vance: When trying times hit me, my first question is, what did I do wrong? Yes. I don't question God. That's not in me to question God. I question myself. What did I do wrong? So that was.
Josie Hoffman: My question is always, how can I not make it happen again?
Keith Vance: Yeah. Especially going through the kind of pain you went through.
Josie Hoffman: How can we not do this again? I don't want to do this again. Yeah.
Keith Vance: Can we make another little transition? Sure. You keep hitting around. You had a boyfriend and your, your husband and stuff, but in the middle of suffering, your lowest point, you found. I did. The best thing you found. Actually, I would call this true love.
Josie Hoffman: I would agree with that.
Keith Vance: You found true love in the middle of suffering.
Josie Hoffman: My husband has loved me through more things than we met my second week in college. He's a year ahead of me. He was a roommate with a friend of mine from church. So we both attended a college. I don't mind. It's Pensacola Christian College. Student body is like 4,000 students, you know? So you meet lots of people, but you're not guaranteed to meet the right person. And he was roommates with Kevin. He brought Kevin to dinner and I'd brought friends, you know, you do things in herds at Christian colleges. And I met Kevin. And I remember thinking, hmm, he's kind of a neat guy, you know, kind of like him, you know, and we did stuff in groups all first semester. And then over Christmas break, he purposely did not have any communication. He had decided he wanted to see how he felt, you know, instead of like getting caught in the moment. What a moron. Sorry.
Keith Vance: What a moron. I'm going to slap him when he gets back. You can tell him that was not the right thing. When he gets back from Frisbee golf, whatever he's doing, I'm going to say, man, what's wrong with you, dude? What did you have to think about?
Josie Hoffman: So we came back after Christmas break. And he's so funny. He wanted to call my dad to get permission. So he asked for my dad's number. Then the man makes me wait. And I'm like, did he call? Did he not call? Did he ask my dad? Did my dad say no? Did he, whatever? He waited a whole like two and a half weeks. And I was like, because I'm not a very patient person sometimes. So then he finally, you know, said, I called your dad, got permission. I'd like to start officially dating you. So we started dating. And I got really nervous to meet his parents because his parents were coming down for his sister's graduation. His sister was graduating that year and super nervous to meet his parents, you know, met his parents that May. And then we dated all through college. He graduated a year ahead of me. And, well, year and a half because I had to wait the extra semester. And I think we knew probably eight or ten months in that this was probably the one. And I actually had never dated anybody else. Kevin is my one and only, which is pretty cool. He had kind of dated this other girl. His mother wasn't super fond of her. So that, you know, nipped that in the bud, whatever. And so it was nice because we could fully do the dating, love, sharing heart, whatever you want to call it, with each other relationship. It was a long time. I don't recommend that long of dating and engagements. However, life is what you, you know, you get. So we were close to getting engaged. He actually, it's a side story. I think we started to tell you this yesterday and got interrupted. His senior year, my junior year, that Christmas, he wanted to propose to me so we could spend a semester together before he graduated. And then we'd have my year. He flew out to Colorado because he used to come out and see me at Christmas. And he went for a drive with my dad and he asked my dad and, and they come back.
Keith Vance: And listen, if I was your dad, I'd say, you owe me five sprinkler systems for my daughter. Like I would have negotiated. I would have negotiated some work out of him while he was in here. Let me see you put some sprinklers in boy.
Josie Hoffman: So, so he comes back, you know, and we all know what's going on on this conversation. Yeah. Kevin won't make eye contact with him. And my dad's like, let's go for a drive. And I'm like, now what's going on? You know, I've been dating and we've had his permission to date and like, what's going on? And so we go, as my dad always does, it was a multitasking. We went to wash the vehicle. Yeah. And we're talking while we wash the vehicle. And he goes, you know, Kevin asked if you guys could get engaged. He said, I want you to wait. And I'm like, do you not want me to marry him? Do you not like him? You know, I'm trying to go through this whole list. And he's like, no. He said, I think Kevin's a great guy. I want you guys to have a semester apart to make sure. I don't want you to just be getting married because you're the only ones that you've been together and whatever, whatever. And I remember he was very angry at my father. And Kevin and I were both hurt. We struggled with that, you know, but we very much wanted my dad's blessing. And so we waited. So we did not get engaged. So we had that last semester. And then that summer is when I got diagnosed with cancer. Well, my dad also being the way he is, he's like, well, you can't get engaged yet, but you can plan the wedding. I'll let you start that. Which doesn't make sense, but to him it did, you know? So I was with my bridesmaids and we were starting to like reserve the church and whatever. And I'd actually gotten to, I went to David's Bridal with my bridesmaids to pick out the dresses. And they're like, while you're here, why don't you try on dresses? Like, no, no, no. I don't want to try on dresses. Like, we're here for you. You know, I'm not even engaged yet. And they're like, just try on dresses. I was like, fine. Second dress I tried on, I found it. But they had to order, you know how it is. And that, wouldn't you know, that wedding dress came in the day before I went to the hospital. Wow. Like, what a cool promise. You know what I'm saying? So when Kevin came out with my, when I got diagnosed and we made a lot of life decisions in those 10 days, we were not engaged, but we were virtually engaged.
Keith Vance: You were secretly engaged. I know you did. You probably did like, but you guys did like Braveheart. Like, on the moonlight, like, all right, we're going to, here's your ring. Like, hide in your pocket before dad sees it.
Josie Hoffman: I will tell you though that, so I did chemo July, August, September, radiation October into November. And then I flew out to Maryland at Christmas time to spend some time with him. Yeah. And he proposed to me. And I have the picture. My hair just started coming back in, you know, and I, I will always be grateful for the love that he's given me because.
Crosstalk: I felt so broken.
Josie Hoffman: And I had a crazy family backstory and I was this fiercely independent, unsubmissive woman. And yet he did not, he did not hesitate. Never once hesitated and never once, at least what he told me, maybe he'd tell you something different, but, um, cause love never changed. And, you know, since we got married, I have had more than my fair share of health issues. Um, we'll probably get into them. Um, I have severe cardiac damage from the chemo. I have pacemaker, 100% pacemaker dependent, a hundred percent. You know, I've developed problems with my thyroid. I've had. Skin cancer removed four times. I have another cardiac issue that I now deal with, which is an inflammation of the lining around the heart. I had two hip surgeries when we'd been married five years because my growth plate closed wrong as a teenager. I mean, you name it, my poor husband has had to deal with it. And his love has never changed for me. And to me, he shows Christ's love and Christ's example. And he is, I know it's such a cliche, but he is my rock. He is my, a lot of my strength is Kevin. And I will always be grateful for that. I couldn't do life without him.
Keith Vance: It makes the words in sickness and in health, for better, for worse, bring out a whole new meaning. Yes. Because this man knew what he was getting into.
Josie Hoffman: Before it started.
Keith Vance: He could have backed out.
Josie Hoffman: He could have.
Keith Vance: He could have said, I didn't sign up for this. Sorry, we'll be friends. He could have backed out. But that man knew what he was getting into. And he chose you. And that's why you're here because you posted a freaking picture of that. And his hair was longer than yours. It was. And it just struck me so hard. Yeah. Because that's, that's love, man.
Josie Hoffman: It is.
Keith Vance: And that's why, that's why I messaged you. Say, hey, I got to have you on. I got to hear the story. Yeah. So. He's always been there.
Josie Hoffman: He's always. He's always. Um. And it was neat because I got to have a, um, I guess testimony when I, I was still going through follow-up treatment. They would still keep track of my labs and my lab values and things. And when I showed up at the oncologist office with an engagement ring, all the nurses cried. And they said, you don't understand when people go through cancer is when spouses leave. That's not when people get engaged. Wow. And it gave me an opportunity to talk about Christ's love and love for others. And, um, especially coming from the background where my, my parents got divorced and then, you know, other issues like I'll always be grateful for my marriage to my husband. And, um, we do life together and I love it. I love that I get to spend the rest of my life with him. And, um, he does balance me out so well. And he, he got me really good. He finally, he's Mr. Healthy. The man's been on three antibiotics his whole life. He's never been sick. And he finally got me when he had shoulder surgery two years ago. I actually was like kind of nervous about it because he's never had a healthy issue. He was nervous. I was apprehensive. And, um, I wasn't worried about the doctor doing something wrong or whatever. I was worried about him like reacting to the anesthesia or, you know, cause that happens. And, uh, I had this almost like mini panic attack in the waiting room while he was having the surgery. And then he comes out of the surgery and he comes home. And, and I said, I had to admit, I was a little nervous. I said, I was just kind of scared and nervous. And he goes, yeah, it's not like I had something done to a major organ or anything. I said, Hey, that is not fair. Cause he's done. I've had, um, the pacemaker put in and then it's been replaced twice because the batteries only last long enough.
Keith Vance: And then I've had, how do they replace it?
Josie Hoffman: They take the whole device out. It's right under, it's right into the skin right here. Yeah. They create a pocket between the muscle and the fascia and the pacemaker sits in there. Oh, that's cool. So when they have to replace it. Science is amazing, isn't it? It is amazing. Wow. I would not be here without modern science. My heart was pretty broken. Really? Um, so he's been through the, the four chemo drugs that I had. One of them is called Idrimiacin and it is the color of red Kool-Aid. They call it the red devil. That is the nickname for it. It's number one side effect is cardiac damage. That's just the way it is. Um, mine showed up. So I finished treatment in the end of a one, went back to college in O2. And then we got married in January of O3. I started having like higher heart rate. I was just really tired and, you know, trying to fix it. And, um, I'd moved from Denver to Pennsylvania. And so, uh, my oncologist out there that I was doing follow-up was said, I think you should just go see a cardiologist, you know? So I went to a cardiologist and they determined I had what's called, uh, AV node tachycardia, which is a super fast heart rate. Um, when I would like get up and walk across the room, my heart rate would jump over 200. I had what was called, um, re-entry pattern. So in the heart between the atrium and the ventricle, you have what's called the AV node. And so the SA node sits here that the heart beats and it tells the atrium to beat. And then it sends the signal down and it tells the ventricle to beat. You have one spot that's supposed to be open. Um, Mikey. Mikey. eight holes in the AV node. So it would send the signal down and send it back up and send it down and back up. So it's what they call re-entry tachycardia. And when they tried to fix it, that's another God story. The cardiologist, I'll get to it in a second. I had what's called the ring of fire. They couldn't get them all. So they completely scar the AV node. So it's non-functional and the pacemaker communicates between the two. My heart was so broken for lack of a better term. You pull this data off the pacemaker. I go see the cardiologist every six months and they pull all this data off and they can tell you all this stuff. I regularly would have episodes where without a pacemaker, my heart was over 300. So I'm very grateful for modern medicine.
Keith Vance: So as someone who does a lot of fitness and I know heart rate stuff is like zone two, that's when you're burning fat. Zone three, zone five is when you're maxed out. Yep. My zone five is like 160, 170. That's my zone five. That's when I'm, that's when I'm just sucking wind and just want to lay down and die. So imagine how tired you would be if your heart was over 300. And you're doing 300. Like I can't even imagine that. Yeah.
Josie Hoffman: So the pacemaker communicates between the atrium and the ventricle and it keeps my heart uncertain. So my heart rate can't go above 165 and it can't go below 55. So it keeps it in a range. That's a healthy range. For me it is. Yeah. Normally the bottom number is 60, but my heart rate, I think cause I did all that work with my dad growing up and I lived in Colorado, which is higher elevation. My resting heart rate is closer to 55. So they bumped it down for me. So, um, but it doesn't get above 165. They have an upper limit on it.
Crosstalk: So, you know, just have to moderate myself. It works. I got a question here. Sure.
Crosstalk: Um, you're a very driven person. Mm-hmm.
Keith Vance: We talked about you being forced to be still. Mm-hmm. Can we talk about control versus surrender? Like doing all this? Because there seems to be this dynamic. Yeah. Or there's a lesson here that's trying to be taught. It seems like. And, uh, what does control and surrender mean to you through where you're sitting at right now? Just looking back at life. Yeah. That's a, that's a, that's a deep one. And I don't even know what the answer is, but.
Josie Hoffman: I think we're given things that we can control. Okay. I think we're given, um, we can control our effort. Okay. We can control our reactions like we talked about. Yes. We can control our perspective. Okay. You can shift your perspective. But I ultimately think that you have to surrender to God. Because I can control all I want, but I can't control God. And I can't control what God has for my life. My plan for my life was wildly different than what I had. I was never going to move out of Colorado. Certainly wouldn't have had cancer. Um, I was going to have five kids. I was going to marry a youth pastor. Cause I love teenagers. I, um, you know, going to marry, you know, I think we all have the, the six one, you know, bright blue eyes or whatever image I was going to do that. My life is nothing different than what I would have planned, but I couldn't enjoy the life that I have if I wouldn't have surrendered to God. And I think I struggle with wanting to take control back and not surrender. And I think they work together and I think they ebb and flow. I think sometimes I want all the control and I don't have any surrender, but if I give up control and surrender to God is when he can really do what he wants to in my life and the plan that he has for me. And I love, and I can't remember the reference, but it talks about God has a plan for us and God, um, the plans that I have for you. Um, I can't remember it off the top of my head.
Keith Vance: On the tip of my tongue too. Look that up. That's what my boy, that's what my Jamie is. That's what my Jamie's here for.
Josie Hoffman: It's in Jeremiah. It's Jeremiah. I think 31. But another passage in Jeremiah that I love is call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. We don't even know the things that God has for us. We can't even imagine them. We can't even plan them. So if I'm willing to let go of control and surrender, that's when I can get that. But the harder I hold on to control. For me, that's what I do. For me, that's what I do. For me, that's what I do. For Now, like I said, there are things we can control and that we have to control. I have to control my emotions. I have to control my perspective. I have to control my focus. I have to control whatever. But I have to surrender to God's will for my life and God's plan for my life. For I know the thoughts that I have towards you, plans of, now it's not going to come to me either. You know, on the spot. That's all right. Michael, find it. So if I'm willing to surrender, now that also applies in human, okay? I can control everything. I want the vacuum lines in my carpet to be a certain way. And I want my house to be cleaned a certain way. And I want only these groceries at the store. And I only want these meals. And I want my kids' hair to always look like this. Or I can say, you know what? Physically, I can't. I don't have that in me. So I have to let go of the fact that maybe my house is not spotless. Or maybe we go to a restaurant that my family wants instead of what I want. Or, you know, sometimes we have to let go of that control because we can't do it in our physical strength. And that's hard. That's really hard for me. Because I think everybody likes control. I think everybody likes the way that they want to do things. But when you physically can't, you have to let go.
Crosstalk: And you were brought to that point. Yeah. So here's how I can relate. I try to control everything.
Keith Vance: And what happens when I try to control everything and the things I'm trying to control are working against me, I get frustrated and angry and I lose my perspective. And you mentioned the lines in the carpet. Is that you? If I want the lines in the carpet to look a certain way and they're not happening, it's a very big problem for me. But you know what? It's just freaking carpet. And it's just lines.
Josie Hoffman: Doesn't matter. It goes back to the does it matter.
Keith Vance: It doesn't matter. So when you talk about that, we talked about balance earlier. This is another thing that we need to keep in balance. And I struggle because there are things that I'm responsible for. And I want to be responsible for the things that God has called me to be responsible for that are my responsibility. But I don't want the things that aren't my responsibility. Because when I try to take those on, I am not a happy person. Because those are things that God's meant to carry, not me. So trying to find my lane. My lane and God's lane. Let's just look at it that way. Trying to find my lane and God's lane. Yeah. I want all, I try to have a wide lane. And that was helpful. Like personally, what you just, how you broke it down, helped me see it in a way that I hadn't been able to communicate it before.
Josie Hoffman: I also think it applies in our relationships with others. If we control everything, we can't learn from other people. And we can't appreciate a different perspective.
Crosstalk: Did you find that hers?
Crosstalk: I mean, I have Jeremiah 31, but I mean, there's 38 verses here. I'm not sure exactly which one she's looking for.
Crosstalk: It could be. What do you have? I can put it on the screen. Put it on the screen. We'll find it. While we're doing that.
Crosstalk: Okay. This is a good one. Redefine strength.
Crosstalk: I can't read that. I can. You're good. I built you.
Crosstalk: See, I might be remembering the wrong passage.
Crosstalk: No, keep going. Okay.
Crosstalk: No. Probably telling you the wrong reference, and that's not helping anybody. It's all right. We'll find it.
Josie Hoffman: But it's in there somewhere. Bible's a big place sometimes. Redefining strength. Strength redefined. You know.
Keith Vance: So, when you have a healthy body, you can do stuff, and now you've got cartilage that's wore out. Now you had a heart that's diminished. Yeah. You have to still be strong. You have to still serve your purpose. But it's not to the capacity that it was before. So, strength redefined. What does that mean to you?
Josie Hoffman: I think one of the things that I've tried to evaluate with strength is, we always think about strength as physical strength. You know, the big, strong man, the big, strong building, the powerful car, the whatever. But you know, there's also mental strength. You know, there's also mental strength. There's emotional strength and there's spiritual strength. And I think we need all of them. And I think often if we're lacking in one, we can find it in another one or they can blend together. You know, I have found in times when I have to be still and I have to think and I have to rest, I can be strong in other ways. I can put my mind to work. I have a very thinking job as a financial planner. It's not a physical job. And I miss the physical activity of working with my dad and being outdoors. I have a very mental job now. I can also use my mind, the mental strength to pray, to send a text to somebody else and ask how they're doing, to think about how I might do things differently or the future plans or whatever. The emotional strength, I think, ebbs and flows in my life, especially as a woman. We are very emotional creatures. And sometimes emotional strength is staying even, you know, and not getting wildly angry or super emotional or dwelling in the sadness. There's that emotional strength. And then, of course, you have the spiritual strength. And that goes back to what we just talked about, the control and surrender. And I think the more that we can rely our spiritual strength on the foundation of the Bible, because that doesn't change. And the foundation of God, it gives us strength as well. You know, strength is derived by a good foundation, whether it be a physical stamina or a building or whatever. But so are the other strengths. They're also derived from a good foundation. And I think being strong is so much more than physical strength. And especially when it's taken away like it was with me, you have to find the other strength. And some days I'm better than others. Like some days I don't feel strong at all. Some days I feel very weak and useless or a failure, you know, or whatever. I think we all go through those days. But if you can stay consistent and strong in all the facets of your area of your life, that's where you get strength from is the foundation. So you always have to have the right foundation. But I don't know. That's kind of a rambling.
Keith Vance: No, it was good.
Crosstalk: I'm digesting what you're saying. Yeah.
Crosstalk: When I started my fitness journey, the purpose was to be physically strong and capable for my loved ones. Which is a great goal.
Keith Vance: When my grandkids want to go do something for me not to have to take an inhaler, like for me to build. Let's get it. Like to be.
Josie Hoffman: You can't keep up with that.
Keith Vance: I want to be the fun grandpa. I want to be like. So that was my purpose. To be physically strong. If I, you know, I got five daughters. If I got to throw down on some boy. I'm just being honest. Like. You wouldn't be able to do it. Then I can do it.
Crosstalk: You know what I mean? I can back it up.
Crosstalk: When I started working on my physical strength.
Keith Vance: There was a question in my mind. What's your, what's your spiritual soldier look like? Yeah. What's the one that we can't see? Yeah. Like this, this is the easy part. The physical is the easy part. What's the spiritual look like? Mm-hmm. And I began to have thoughts that I hadn't had before. Like I need to, I need to strengthen the inward man. Mm-hmm. The spiritual man. And when I started trying to strengthen that inward man. When I realized how weak he was. Yeah. That inward man needs God's word daily. Absolutely. That inward man needs to stay in a constant, a constant state of prayerfulness. Yeah. Like that inward man. And you can't separate the physical. They're all, they're all our being. We're made up of. Right. What you can't see. Yeah. What you can't see. But they're, but they're connected. They're not separated. They're connected. Right. So when I started like working on the one, I became aware of the other. Absolutely. And then emotional. Like I am such a weak, emotional person. Like if things don't go my way, I'm going to throw a fit like a baby. Yeah. And that's not, that's not strength. That's, that's weakness. It is. So I'm like, I'm trying to.
Crosstalk: And if your emotions rule you, you can't do anything else. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Vance: So anyway, someone that constantly loses their temper or that's not strength. That's weak. That's actually a weakness. Like true strength is being still and being quiet. Yeah. Is that your verse there? Proverbs 19, 21. Yeah. There you go. Many other plans in a person's heart, but it's the Lord's purpose that prevails.
Crosstalk: Might not be the exact verse that you're looking for, but it's the same thought.
Josie Hoffman: So we can use it.
Keith Vance: So any other thoughts under that heading strength redefined? I think you, I think you hit it pretty well.
Josie Hoffman: I think it also goes back to what you mentioned earlier a little bit where, and you kind of just mentioned it here. It takes daily exercise, for lack of a better term, to keep all that strength up. And like you mentioned, reading the Bible, praying every day, along with physical strength, along with emotional strength, along with mental strength. And like you mentioned earlier, if we neglect it for a short period of time, most people aren't going to notice. But then you'll notice.
Keith Vance: Then you'll notice.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah. And I think that's why it is a consistent faith. Like it's an act of faith, you know, that you just have to keep doing it.
Crosstalk: One thing when we talked earlier in the week, you talked about your daughters.
Keith Vance: And you are a mother. There's something to be said for motherhood. Like my identity is a dad, a husband, and now a grandfather. That's like my identity. Yes. And I think a woman's identity is a mother. Like that's like the most natural thing. Like mama bear is a real thing. Yeah. All right. So your identity. So when you talk about motherhood and your legacy, let's just, what's that wheelhouse look like? With what you've learned in your journey that got you here. Now you have two girls that are, listen, they're on the cusp of going out on their own. They're 13 and 16. That's going to come quick. I know. That's going to, some boys going to come knocking. Some boys going to come knocking on the door.
Josie Hoffman: We're going to have to talk to their daddy about that one. He's fiercely protective of them.
Keith Vance: My, uh, when I asked my wife to marry me, I didn't ask my father-in-law. I just asked her. I didn't know I was supposed to. Anyway, she showed him the ring and he wanted to take me out of the front yard and fight me. And I did not want to go outside with that guy.
Josie Hoffman: And you're like.
Keith Vance: He meant it too. Michael asked me if it was okay. He asked me, I feel sorry for the guys. I said, please, brother. What has been taking you so long? Please get her. Take her.
Crosstalk: I thought, I thought he was going to want to throw down too. And he was like, well, it took you long enough.
Keith Vance: Took you long enough. Get her, man. Take care of her. I got four other ones I got to handle. Start feeding her. Take care of one of them, right?
Josie Hoffman: Oh, I wish that. One of the things that I would love to teach my kids is. The values and the strengths and the priorities I have. But I don't want them to have to go through the journey that I did. And that's hard. I want my kids to learn to be hardworking and passionate and love God and not depend on themselves. And, but man, I don't want my kids to have to go through what I went through, you know? And that's a hard thing as a parent.
Keith Vance: That's a mama's heart.
Josie Hoffman: But you want them to get all the good results without any struggle, you know?
Keith Vance: But you know what? They're going to have to go through their own fire. There's no shortcuts, is there? They will. But that's hard for a mama.
Josie Hoffman: And you know how it is. Like you said, the mama bear. My kids tell me about things that happened in their school day or with a friend or whatever. And inside, I just want to go beat that person up. Or I want to go, you know, whatever. And I'm like, no, you have to teach them the right reaction, you know? And that's hard for me. That's hard for me.
Keith Vance: I've heard it say that children are a person's heart walking on the outside of their body. For a mother, those are my two hearts walking out there.
Josie Hoffman: And sometimes I feel like I struggle a lot in womanhood, motherhood. I don't have a reference I can go to, you know? I can't call my mom. I don't have a super close relationship with my stepmom, which is a variety of things. My mother-in-law has been very, very sweet and open. But I just, you know, I don't have the same relationship with her either. So some of it is, okay, what do I wish I had? What do I wish I would have had done? You know? And I do draw from my relationship I had with my dad. My dad was a dad. He was not a mom. But he taught me a lot about, for example, my dad didn't mind if we ask questions. As long as they were done properly. You know? I've been that way with my kids. They can ask me about anything. They can talk to me about anything that they don't understand. You know? At least I think they can. I don't think my kids have a secret life. You know? We never really know. But I want them to have what I didn't. But I want them to learn the values that I did. And that's a hard balance. It's hard. it's a hard journey. I pray over them all the time. I pray that I don't mess them up. You know, God's pretty good at getting what he needs done, but we humans get in the way sometimes.
Keith Vance: Yeah. Even, even in our good intentions.
Josie Hoffman: We've tried to always have them in church and around other people that can influence them, because I think children need to learn from more than their parents. I think they need to learn from other authority, from other people, you know, and you can learn good and bad. You know, my daughter's working a job with non-believers in a secular environment and she comes home and she's just, you know, someday she's like, oh, they were talking about this or this happened, you know, and it's a good environment. I don't want you to think it's a bad environment, but it's not always a Christian environment. And it's been a way for me to help her understand and still be respectful to her managers. And you know what I'm saying? That that's part of life is we interact with the world every day. But I always encourage my kids to learn from people they like and people they don't like. If you didn't like that, then you make sure you don't do it the same way.
Keith Vance: Man, that's good.
Josie Hoffman: You know, and you can learn from anybody. I feel often that I mess up with my kids, but I've also learned to apologize to my kids. That's important too. And they don't expect us to be perfect. They don't. I just have to do the best that I can and rely on God's strength to be strong. And hopefully God fills it in. My pastor has a phrase that I've tried to use in my life. We've tried to use in our kids' life. I want my hands so full of God. There's no room for anything else. We've tried to do that with our kids. You know, we have them in church. We have them in a Christian school. We talk about God in our home. We read the Bible in our home. We have good music in the home. We point them to good resources. We encourage them to do stuff. And not that the world is terrible and they can't learn from the world, but I want their go-to to be God. And I want their go-to to be God even over me. Because if someday I'm not doing the right thing, I don't want to lead them astray. I want them to rely on God. And I think as parents, the other thing, and you've got a lot more kids than I do, they're so different. You know, you think you get this one kid figured out and then this other one comes along and they're very different and even they change over time and you have to adapt and you have to adjust and you have to, you know, be in the moment and you have to be thinking through things. And back to parent, to motherhood, sometimes I feel like I've caused them more trauma than I have. I've had all the cardiac procedures. I've had all these other issues and my poor tender hearted 13 year old just gets very concerned when anything happens with me. She gets very nervous, very worried. You know, now she's old enough. She thinks about it. She thinks about if something happened to me or something happened to daddy or, you know, and I hope that I'm teaching her faith over fear. I hope that I'm not bringing unneeded stress in her life. But by the same token, you can teach him faith over fear and that's the perfect way to do it. You know, it's that like trial by fire thing. So I don't know. Everything has pluses and minuses, I guess.
Keith Vance: Looking back, there's been times where I tried to create these teachable moments with my kids and find a verse or something and like make like, maybe I say a prayer, God use this, you know, but looking back was me. It was me. Yeah. It was me taking control, trying to make change and making change with godly principles.
Crosstalk: But it was still me. Yeah.
Crosstalk: Um, I have, ooh.
Crosstalk: Nowadays, I have more conversations with God about my kids than I do with my kids.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine. Okay.
Keith Vance: I have a lot more conversations with God about my kids than I do with my kids. Yeah. And there seems to be, that seems to be working. That seems to be working. Yeah. I'm thankful. And being okay, being okay with when I got exposed to me, that was wrong and I messed up. It'd be okay with my kids and say, Hey, I was wrong. I'm sorry. I messed up. And kids are naturally. Like, in a kid's eyes, their parents are their hero. Yeah. Like in there. And kids are very forgiving. They're naturally prone to cutting somebody some slack. Yeah. They can pick up hypocrites real good.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah, they can.
Keith Vance: But they can also pick up some genuineness. Yes, they can. And they're prone to responding to genuineness. Yeah. And humility.
Josie Hoffman: Well, I think also apologizing to our kids teaches them that we are not perfect. We're not infallible, you know, and we make mistakes just like everybody else. So I think it's good for them to learn because if you teach a kid that you never make a mistake, well, then they're going to feel like they can never make a mistake.
Keith Vance: You know? Good. Kids are hard. I would never, I wouldn't give it up though. Kids are, like I said, my kids are my purpose, my identity. My kids have been so good for me. Yes. Kept me on the straight and narrow. They gave me my purpose, my identity. And they deserve much better than what they got, but I'm still trying. Yeah. And it ain't over till it's over. You know what I mean? Like we can always change. Yes. And at 50 years old, be able to call my kid up and say, hey, I just remembered this. I was wrong. Hmm. Love you. Sorry. Wow. That feels good. Yeah. I've had conversations like that. It's been good. So your kids, you're going to mess them up because you're human. No. You're going to.
Josie Hoffman: I don't want to mess them up.
Keith Vance: We are imperfect. I know. Grinding with imperfect. And, and, uh, but it's a good life, man. It's a good life. And your life was a hard life going through your health, your, all these health issues that you've gone through, but you have a perspective. Again, I'm seeing this theme, a special needs sister who doesn't know what hurry means. Yeah. Health issues that are making you slow down. Like you have a perspective that, Hey, this can wait. I'm going to be in this moment with you. And just hearing your relationship with your daughters, that's working. Like you're in the moment. Uh, for a lot of years, I was not, I'm just in the future trying to grind it out and make it happen. Luckily they have a good mom that was in the moment with them that they didn't get from me.
Josie Hoffman: That's why we have good marriages. We balance.
Keith Vance: Yeah. I got like three or four things there we can talk about, but I just, I'm going to follow your lead there. We're going to wind this thing down. Is there anything else that you wanted to hit on that you're feeling? Is there anything resonating in you? You want to get out?
Josie Hoffman: I think one thing that you asked me and maybe you're going to get to it is what would I tell somebody who's going through suffering?
Keith Vance: You know, that's a good one.
Josie Hoffman: What piece of advice would I give? I think I would always tell people like, it's okay to live in that moment. It's okay to be sad or depressed or discouraged. Just don't stay there. You know, and my pastor did a message on Elijah that I thought was so powerful. Even Elijah, the man of God, you know, was all angry and depressed and just wanted to die. And God's like, no, just go have some food, take a nap and we'll start over. You know, we all can have those moments of sadness or frustration or anger or depression or whatever. That's normal. That's okay to have. And don't tell yourself you can't have them. Just don't stay there. You know, and I found that by claiming the promises of God and moving on, then you move on, you move on. And yes, you might still be in the moment. You need to come back to it. You know, my cancer wasn't a one day thing. And my heart issue is not a one day thing. It's a lifelong thing that you deal with, but it's how you respond to it. And I've also found that being able to talk to people helps, you know, whether it's a good friend or a therapist, if that's what works for you or a, you know, spiritual leader or whatever. It can help you see a different perspective and it can help you work through things and, you know, find somebody you can talk to. Find somebody that can help you, not just somebody to talk to, but somebody that can help you. And also one of the things that I've learned in my life that helped me through a lot of my hard times is find somebody you can serve. Because when you're serving other people, you can't focus on you. And maybe it's your kids. Maybe it's your spouse. Maybe it's the neighbor. Maybe it's somebody else. But that's how you can help yourself not stay there and move on is by serving other people, you know, because that's, you can't focus on yourself. And also if you're going through a hard time, you might not understand it. I didn't understand when I got cancer at 21. I didn't understand my knees. I didn't understand any of that. But the opportunity that I have had to share the gospel, share God's love, share with other people, I would have never had that opportunity if I wouldn't have had those trials. You know, I had, I've been able to be a blessing to a lot of people going through cancer because I've been there. Like I get it. I get, I get what you're doing. I get what you're going through. I get your emotions. I get one thing nobody seems to talk about. It's, it's a real thing is survivor guilt. Why did I survive through cancer? And my grandmother did not. We feel guilty because we survived. Like, you know, those things, I can talk to people with those things from a different perspective because I've been there. I've been there. And that is a testimony and a powerful thing that not everybody can have. You know, like you grew up in a preacher's home. I don't know that. I didn't grow up in a preacher's home. So you can talk to other kids of preachers like I can't talk to. You know, God gives everybody a different journey so that we can bless other people and we can encourage other people because we get it. We've been there. And I think that's one of the things about suffering is we only see the ugly side of it. But there is good to suffering. And even Paul talked about he had a thorn in the flesh. He never got rid of that.
Keith Vance: Let's hear it, girl. You're almost preaching now, but let's go. Let's get it.
Josie Hoffman: But yeah, Paul could be, he says all things to all men. And he'd been the spiritual leader in the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He'd been up in the Roman government. He was a Roman citizen. He'd been a tent maker. You know, he's all things to all people. And I think that's why people listen to him. And I think sometimes God gives us a journey so we can be a blessing to other people or talk to other people or just empathize with other people.
Keith Vance: What? What's the verse? Suffering produces. Suffering produces. Patience. Oh, yes. Hope. Hope. There's like three or four things.
Josie Hoffman: Yeah. Peace and love.
Keith Vance: Yeah. You don't get it without suffering. No. You, uh, it was providential that I didn't, that I said, hey, take the reins. It was providential because.
Crosstalk: That by God thing.
Crosstalk: Yeah.
Crosstalk: It was providential. Yeah.
Keith Vance: I'll talk to you about it off camera. Sure. But that's going to encourage. That's going to encourage some people that I didn't, I couldn't help. That was good. Good. And I want to leave it there because that was powerful. I can't even make it sound any better than what you just did. That was perfect.
Josie Hoffman: It's God. It's, it's not me. And I'm not saying that to deflect. God has taught me so much in my life. I just want to share with people. He is good. I can still say that. God is still good. I have so many blessings. Yeah. So many blessings.
Keith Vance: So I'm glad that there was a case of mistaken identity.
Josie Hoffman: I am too.
Keith Vance: And if the real Josie's listening to this. You can reach out, right? About 1985 to 1987, kindergarten. Miss Tyson was our teacher. I used to go by Terry then, my first name. We can talk. But I'm glad I found this Josie. This has been a pleasure.
Josie Hoffman: It's been a great experience. I'm, I enjoyed getting to know you and your wife yesterday. Yeah, me too. I love how God brings people together.
Keith Vance: It's amazing, isn't it? And to be able to share hard stories in an open and transparent way, you don't know how that's going to have an impact on somebody. And we covered a lot of ground. Yeah. So you get out by the flight here in a little while and head back to Maryland. So let's follow it up. That's okay.
Intro voiceover: Still Strong. Watch me rise my way. Slow growth turns into real change. I found joy in the simple days. In honest work and faith. Still Strong. No rush, no rain.