From Curveballs to Communion: Balancing Faith and Family Challenges

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Swinging into the unexpected is never easy. Just ask Stacy Sanchez. This week, we're stepping up to the plate with Stacy as she reveals how the curveballs of life like suddenly becoming a grandparent.

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Raising grandchildren are a lot like standing in the batter's box. Fast, unpredictable, and yes, sometimes striking out is part of the game.

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Stacy shares her home run strategies for catching life's curveballs, finding communion in chaos, and why waiting on God's perfect pitch can turn struggles into grand slams. From trauma tales to triumphs, hitting homers in parenting and finding joy amid life's messiest innings, this episode is one you'll definitely want in your lineup.

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Welcome to grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity in this podcast, we will delve. Deep into the challenges and triumphs of. Grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support. I invite you to join us on. A journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice. We will explore the nuances of childrearing. For children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the. Course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's. Future, all within a supportive community that. Understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice. Is heard, youre experiences are valued, and your journey is honored.

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Hello and welcome back to another enlightening episode of grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity. I'm your host, Laura Brazon, and today we have a truly inspirational guest joining us. Stacy Sanchez is not just a pastor and author, but also a devoted mother, grandmother, business owner, and as many of you will relate to, a grandparent raising her grandson, Stacy's journey has been one of resilience, faith, and finding holiness in the everyday messiness of life. When I first heard Stacy's author tagline connecting holiness to everyday life from curveballs to communion, I knew she would be a perfect fit for our podcast. It speaks volumes about navigating life's unexpected twists while maintaining a deep connection with what truly matters.

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In today's episode, Stacy will share her experiences and insights on how faith, patience, and community support have guided her through the myriad challenges of raising her grandson well. Dive into some deeply personal stories discussing the impact of trauma, the importance of professional help, and the simple, joyful moments that make all the struggles worthwhile. So, whether you're a grandparent facing similar challenges, a parent seeking understanding, or simply someone who loves heartwarming tales of triumph over adversity. This episode will offer you a fresh perspective and perhaps a new sense of hope. I'm speaking today with a lady that I've been very excited to get a hold of. We've communicated several times and a lot has gotten in the way to get us to recording this episode. So I'm very excited.

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Stacy Sanchez is not unlike myself and that we both really enjoy helping other people and people that are raising their grandchildren, grandparents raising their grandchildren, because both of us are one of 2.7 million grandparents in the US right now that are raising their grandchildren.

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Stacy became a pastor in her life journey. She is an author. She's a business owner. She's a mom and a grandmother who is raising a grandson. Her grandson was eight when he came to her. He's now 14.

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I want to let Stacy share about her story and how she became a grandparent raising a grandchild. Sure. Hi, Laura. I'm so happy to be here. And we finally get to connect.

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Something kept coming in between us, so I think this is going to be powerful. I'm going to believe it anyway. I am a mother of four, total of five. My husband had a daughter before we were married, and I have nine grandchildren, all boys except one grand princess.

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About, what is it, six, seven years ago?

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My daughter went through some serious struggles and we raised her as our own. She's my husband's niece that we got guardianship of and took her through to adulthood and raised her as our own. She's my daughter. I love her immensely, but she went off and she's my little prodigal, and she's what I say, working on her testimony. And I know God's going to do a good work in her, but right now she's dealing with that. And she had some struggles with her son, and DC's got involved, and one night they put him on our doorstep and said, I opened the door and here he is.

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So now we're raising him and having to go through some of the same struggles we went through with her. He has experienced all kinds of trauma. This poor kid. What he's experienced has no child. No child, no adult should experience.

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And it breaks my heart to even think about it because it's not good. So he. Because when you're traumatized like that, your body remembers even how it doesn't matter how old you are, your body remembers. And so he perpetrates on others, and we needed to put him into a treatment facility, and that's where he's at right now.

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And I hope he'll be able to get the help he needs so he can come home maybe one day.

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I'm glad he's in a place where hopefully he can get some help.

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Yes, please pray for that, because he's such a good kid and so is my daughter. Amazing hearts. They have so much potential, but because of the hurt that was perpetrated on them, they have all this baggage. And when we got my daughter, I tried to get her the help she needed. And everybody kept saying, you know, back then, just love her through it. Love her through it. Well, love wasn't enough. She needed more than my love could give her. And so now, hopefully, she's finding a place where she's getting the help she needs as well. I haven't heard from her. I don't know what's happening, but I knew when we got my grandson that our love wasn't going to be enough. He needed way more than I could give him, and so I was bound and determined to get it for him. I think that's something that a lot of us grandparents experience because we think we give him a home and food and a lot of love and consistency. And that's not enough for these kids.

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No. And you would hope it would be. It's not because they really need some expert help that can get in there and work with them and heal those parts of them that were severely wounded as young, young children. And it rewired their brain and their thinking and how they make decisions and how they see life. And so they need to get in there and get some trauma therapy to help heal that. And I'm not an expert in that. So he needed something more than I had a. And it's good that we can be aware of that, willing to get help, because a lot of us are too proud to get help. Yeah. And that's sad. That's sad because it only hurts the children. And, you know, you feel bad as a grandmother or a mother, you want to be there for them and you want your love to be enough, but sometimes it's just nothing. And that's okay.

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Yeah. What have been some of the most challenging issues for you, raising your grandchild? Well, honestly, it was, did I even want to do this? You know, most. I hope that doesn't sound horrible that, you know, my first instinct is, oh, I don't want to do this again, because what we just went through with my daughter and the horrible things we had to deal with, and here we go again. And I remember having a conversation with God and saying, I don't want to do this. I can't believe you're making me do this. We just raised her into adulthood. We are empty nesters now. We can live life and enjoy our lives because we really, we hadn't had. We didn't have an enjoyable life with her as much as we loved her. So now we can enjoy life. And we were doing that. And, God, you want us to do it again? Again? And I was crying out to him, and I heard in my spirit, can you give me ten years? And I said, oh, is it bad if I tell you no? What if I say no? God, are you going to hate me if I say no? And of course, I was just working it out with him, and he can handle that.

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He wants us to work it out with him. And I needed to be honest with God. What if I say no?

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Okay, what if you say no, Stacey? Then what happens to this little boy? So, of course, I talked with my husband, and it was a big decision for us because our whole lives were going to change. Everything we had set up, everything we were going to do immediately changed. So, of course we said yes. And that was a challenge to get to the yes. But we did.

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Some other challenges were balancing family life and being a parent now. So when, like, say at Christmas time, you have grandkids and you're raising this child and he's a grandkid, and it's like, how do you balance all that out? You have to be a parent to one and grandparent to another. And I'm the kind of grandparent that wants to spoil my grandkids. And I do. I Christmas, I go all out. But as a parent, it's different. You know, you're trying to raise these kids to be good adults, and you can't just spoil them. You know, grandkids you can send home, but when you're raising them, you can't. So that was a challenge. And because he was traumatized and he acted out on that trauma, it hurt people I loved. So that was a challenge of balancing that out and dealing with that and the hurt he caused them. So there was quite a few challenges. One of them, if I now I'm thinking of it, is learning to work the system, learning to work within it, because I had no clue. I had no clue what we were doing. You know, how do you raise a child that you know isn't biologically yours and, you know, get them involved in school and, you know, all the legalities with it and learning to work? That was a challenge as well, because no one was helping. I had to figure it out on my own.

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I don't think a lot of people realize those complicated issues in this particular situation. They are very real.

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It's. I've experienced everything you've been talking about myself. That's another reason why I like being able to share that with outsiders who can have an opportunity to look inside our world and know how they can support and know how they can help. And for other grandparents to have these conversations to share as a community, because for us, this is part of what makes this community to be able to talk about this. It's not something friends want to have in a conversation over dinner. Right. But we can talk about that. We can talk about it all here, because we all know what you're talking about. Yes. We've all been through those things. Yes. It's not easy. No. And I love. I know you love God, and that's what brought you to being a pastor, helping other people with that. And I love your perspective about holiness being a part of our everyday lives, because when we retire, we sort of see that our life is a little more black and white.

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You've gone through life. You know what you want. You know what you don't want.

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And being thrust back into the complication of the life we have. Raising grandchildren is messy. It's really messy, and it's very imperfect, and it puts me back into the mindset of being a parent. When I was in my thirties, I was a parent later in life, in my thirties, but it's messy. And I love your perspective about life. You say we go from curveballs to communion. Yeah. Tell the listeners how you came up with that quote. Well, that's my author tagline, connecting holiness to everyday life from curveballs to communion. And I came up with it. Well, a friend of mine came up with it for me, but because I love baseball. Love, love baseball and was very involved with baseball, and I love writing about communion. So everything in between there is what I write on. You talked about the messy of life, and life isn't perfect. Life isn't this pretty little thing with a bow on top. Life can get ugly. And I. Nasty and scary. And there's where we find communion.

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There's where Jesus is. He's not afraid of our messiness or our ugliness. He steps right into it. And our communion with him is right there in our pain and in our struggle and in our hurts, and that's where we can find him the closest to us.

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And I love that about. About him when I'm preaching or I'm teaching. I love to do communion with people. And I take a little cup of the juice and I take an eyedropper of water and I drop one drop into the juice, and I say, the juice obviously represents Jesus and the water represents you. This is your life. And I drop it in. I said, watch what happens to this water. What happens? And they say, well, it disappears. Well, the makeup of the water is still the same. It gets engulfed into this juice. And that's our lives with Jesus. We become engulfed. We're hidden in him. In him.

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We live and move and have our being.

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And if you look, you can't take the water away from the juice. No matter how hard you try, that water is not coming out of the juice. Nothing is going to snatch you from my hand. Jesus said, so our lives are hidden in him, in this messiness, where he steps right into it and communes with us and says, I get it. I get your messy, I get your hurt. Been there. I'm with you. I'm walking with you, and you will never leave my side. And when I say, curveballs, we've all had curveballs in our life, you know, obviously, grandparents, boom, we got hit with a curveball. Okay, here we go. Raising a kid. Wasn't expecting that one today, but here we are. And have you, I don't know if you've ever played baseball, but have you ever been thrown a curveball? Do you know how to hit a curveball? No, most people don't say, no. That's good. Most people don't. And when I was coaching baseball, I had to teach my players, you can hit a curveball. You can knock it out of the part, but there's a secret to it. You have to wait on it. You cannot swing that bat. As soon as you see that ball pitched, like you, you know, instinctively would if it was a fastball.

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You have to wait a split second for it to break because you don't want to swing ahead of the ball. So you have to wait. That is our life with Jesus. When we're hit with a curveball of life, our first initial reaction is to swing away. And I want to fix it. I want to deal with it. I'm going to control it. I'm going to end up messing it up, is what I'm going to do. And if we step back and we wait a split second and say, okay, God, this is what I want to do. I want to fix this. What do you want to do? And we wait a split second, we talk to God, we follow his direction. We pray, we read the Bible, whatever he calls us to do at that moment. And then we act on what he directs us to do. We'll knock that curveball out of the park.

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We'll hit a home run. So that is why I like to connect the curveballs of everyday life into our communion. We step back, we wait, and we realize we are one with Christ.

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We move in him, we live in him. We breathe. As he breathes, we breathe. And that's why I love that part. I love that.

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I love that. I can definitely relate. I continually get thrown curveballs. Like this car accident we were just in.

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That's a big one. It was. And we were on vacation and having the best time with the. All of a sudden, everything changed. And I was injured, and I had to be on crutches, so I couldn't have do some of the things I've been doing with them. And I said, you know, this is just. We're gonna go with the flow here. I'm getting better at taking the curveballs from this experience. The kids got to ride on their first plane trip, and the captain saw a mother alone with two kids and crutches and let the kids get in the pilot seats of the plane in the airport. I had to get help.

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One thing that I wrote about in my journal because of that, when we. Need help, you meet the most amazing. People, because there are a lot of people out there that are ready to help you. There was a woman who saw me. In the airport, and she said, can I get you some water? And what I realized was, when you take those difficult opportunities and you look for the good in it and not the bad, that is where God is, and the most wonderful things come from it. On the other side, let's talk about trauma based thinking and how it affects someone that's been through trauma. Well, as not a psychologist or an expert, but I can tell you what I experienced with my daughter and with my grandson. And the way the trauma rewired their brain in, the way they thought was it could be subtle and insidious or outright in your face, you know? But even the way they thought about their outlook on life, they were things they would detach from life, the way they made decisions was all fear based. And of course it would be.

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Of course it would be because you're having to protect yourself. So you've put up these walls to protect yourself, and now the thing that you've put up to protect yourself is now hurting you. And so they have had to. Well, I hope my grandson is learning to rewire his brain. He's doing trauma therapy and stuff like that, but it really affects you, and it affects the people around you that love you because they don't know, you know, how to relate. Like, I didn't know how to relate to this child that was detaching and anger. He would go from super, super, super happy instantly. Anger, instant. Something would trigger, and he was instantly hurt and offended easily. And so I didn't know how to get to him. And a lot of therapists were having a hard time even getting to him because of this trauma. And finally, I think we found somebody that can help him.

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I mean, he's done self harm, he's harmed others. He's gotten into fights, the lying, the manipulation.

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And then he would turn around and be just this most wonderful child. And I, you know, flatter you. He was so charismatic. So he would go from, what is it? Flight, fight, freeze, and then move into fawn, and he would. He would fawn somebody.

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That was the insidious nature of the trauma, where he would start grooming people either for something he wanted. You know, you're the best. You're something or something hurtful to somebody else. So the trauma really gets in there and affects who you are. However, the person that God made you to be is still in there, and he can heal that part, that wound that's in there with some professional help. He works.

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God partners with professionals to do this. But Jesus can heal that wound. I know he can because he healed mine. And I've had some major trauma in my life, and he's healed that as well.

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You know, that's interesting you brought that up because I had trauma when I was young. I was sexually abused as a young child, and I didn't remember it until I was in my twenties. So I'd been acting out some behavior that was not healthy as a young person. And, you know, I got my life together. I made a lot of mistakes along the way because of the trauma I'd been through. And then I cleaned up pretty good. You know, then I met my husband, and I had some great goals for my life.

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I was determined that we were going to enjoy life together. And then we got the call to get the kids, and the trauma has triggered a lot of the old trauma in me, and I was angry about that at first. I thought, I don't want to raise these kids. This is just. This is not fun. I have to dig up all the old stuff that happened to me, along with dealing with what's going on with them, but I found that to be a blessing, and it has already made me a better person. So, yeah, I understand that anger. I understand that anger a lot. They say anger is a cover emotion. Well, anger points us in the direction of what's not right. There's something not right.

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So when you're angry about something, think, okay, what am I? What's not right about this situation? How can I change it? What needs to be fixed? What needs to be healed? Because I'm covering over something that isn't right in me. What is that? And that's something to take to God. And you mentioned something a few minutes ago about flow. You go with the flow, and that is our life in Jesus. This flowing, this tide, this up and down, this tide that we start moving, you know, like we're in a boat, we're rocking with him. And sometimes those things.

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Those things that make us so angry drive us to our knees so that we can come before him. I remember one time with my daughter, I was going through some serious pain, and I was flat on my face. I didn't even hit the ground on my knees. I went flat on my face before the Lord, and I couldn't even breathe. And I'm like, God, I couldn't even talk. I was in my mind, and all I could do was groan. I just was hurting so bad. And he heard those groans. That's what the Holy Spirit does. He interprets those groans and prays for us. And so all I could do was groan. And that flow with God, this back and forth of groaning and the Holy Spirit interpreting for me. And I heard in my spirit, breathe, stacy, I can't breathe. And I heard in my spirit, again, breathe to the rhythm of my love. And I just took a breath, and then I took a couple breaths, and then I heard in my spirit, reach out, like I was reaching out to touch the hem of his garment. And I did, and I reached out, and I heard again, you're moving forward. You're moving forward. And it's just that little reaching out. That's all we have to do to move forward, to touch him. And he's right there in the middle of that. Right there in the middle of that flow, wanting to heal us. In this season of your life, what have been some of the greatest life lessons that you've had? Probably that realization of life in Christ. Like, I gave that example of the communion, the water droplet. Yes, I've always heard that, and, yes, I've always known in him we live and move and have our being. But in this time of my life and going through what I've gone through, this, working it out with him, you know, from anger to, you know, acceptance to joy, even you can find joy in it now.

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I've experienced that oneness, that communion with Jesus, and that has been my greatest lesson of how that really works. How are you and your husband managing this time? You are an amazing woman, and I'm sure he very much appreciates you. But how's he handling all of this? What a guy. He's amazing.

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He went through some of the same struggles I did. Our daughter accused my husband of doing some things that he did not do, and so we had to go through that. So he's the same way. I want to do this again.

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I can't believe we're being asked to do this. So we struggle together.

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It has brought us closer together. It could have tore us apart.

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It was close if we allowed it to. It could have tore us apartheid because it wasn't easy, what we had to deal with, with our grandsons. So we determined we made a choice that it was going to bring us together.

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So he sees things very practically. He's such a practical man. A plus b equals c. Doo doo doo doo doo doo this. And I'm very much on the outside going, well, if it depends on what c looks like today, you know, maybe he's feeling this. And so I'm very much, you know, trying to nurture and so we have to learn how to bring those together because sometimes they, they can butt heads. But he. Gosh, that man is amazing. I am so lucky. So lucky.

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That's really cool. It's a struggle. The struggle.

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Yeah. I don't think it's ever a perfect situation.

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And we resolve it and keep our marriages together, hopefully. I have so far found some amazing things that have happened because of that. As long as we're honest and two. People have to commit to doing it. If one person isn't committing to making it work, it won't work. And then, you know, God bless you. I get it. You can't do it with one person, but. Well, my husband honestly didn't want to do it at first.

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And I think it was funny that the switch was one day we're sitting in the hot tub, we have a hot tub and we're talking about their future and our future, and we kind of take it, you know, a few months at a time. Really, honestly, we really don't know what the future will bring. We hoped that their parents would at some point, get it together to be able to take their children back, and that would be ideal for us. I would love that.

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That would be great at any time. At any time.

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I'd be very willing. And my husband thinks that, because I do a pretty good job of being a mother, and I think I was a pretty good mother to my own children, and still am, but I had my struggles, too. Everybody thinks that I'm a naturally good mother, that I really love being a mother, and I love my children.

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All I ever wanted as a young. Woman was to be a mother. I wanted four children, and I wanted to be a mother. And I know a lot of people don't have a lot of respect for that.

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I shouldn't say that, but it's not valued. Motherhood isn't valued like it should be.

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Yeah. When I was young, I just wanted a family, which I didn't have, and I wanted a husband who worshiped me, and I wanted children, and I wanted to create that nucleus. So everybody thinks that I'm some kind of great mother because I'm doing this also for my grandchildren. And my husband brought that up when we were in the hot tub. And, of course, we've only known each other eight years.

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I think it's eight years, maybe going on nine. And in the perspective of things, that's not very long to know someone, you've been married for many, many years, so you all know each other very well. And I told my husband, I say, you know, I don't think that I am naturally a good mother.

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I think I've learned because I want to love the way I didn't get loved. My mother is a very loving person, don't get me wrong, but I had just a lot of trauma. My mother was married several times. We were emotionally abused. She was emotionally abused, and that's what I knew family to be. So I wanted something different. And I don't do it very well because I never saw it. I wasn't raised that way. And I've had to learn to be a good mother, and I am a faithful woman.

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And when something gets presented to me that I feel I have to do, I have learned to do it because of all the trauma in my life, because things have been hard. And I actually am better at coping with trauma than I am at just relaxing and enjoying life and letting other things go. So my husband was shocked, because I think he's always felt guilty that he didn't really want to do this from the beginning, and that I had to push him. And I said, yeah. I'd rather be sitting on a beach in Spain, too, you know? But what are we gonna do? So I think it brought us closer. Same. Have a hard time doing this all the time. Same.

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It's tiring. We can't have some of the things in life that we thought we would have at this point. It's made me want personal belongings less, you know? You think when you're retired, you're finally going to have that money to buy that dress that you really wanted or get your hair done, or I get a facial. I can't do some of the things that I really did want to do, and I have to spend money on the kids instead. But, boy, has that been a great lesson. Yeah. You know what I want more than anything? Just peace. Yeah. Just peace.

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That's what I long for now. We are blessed. You know, we're doing okay, but I just want peace because we've lived in the trauma and the chaos for so long that when you finally get to the piece, it almost feels like stress. He's like, I don't know how to do this because I know how to do chaos. I know how to do trauma. I don't know how to do peace. So I long for peace.

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Yeah. Oh, that's cool. You know what gets me really excited?

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Yesterday, we asked the kids to pick up their toys, and usually it's a big struggle because they never had any order in their life. Their house was total chaos.

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It's been hard for them to adjust to a routine, and they both jumped up from their seats and put away all their toys. And I went, they're learning something. They're learning how to do something for people that they can trust, and they know that they will get loved and in return for that.

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And so when they were done, I just showered praise on them, and I said, I've got a surprise for you for doing such a great job. I'm going to do something for you. Go out in the garage and hide. I made them up this cup of hot chocolate with some marshmallows on it and graham crackers on the side and a spoon so they could scoop up the marshmallows in a straw so that they could suck up the hot chocolate. And I presented it on a beautiful plate, and we're so excited.

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Athena said, look at this beautiful little straw just for sucking up the chocolate. And you put a spoon. Why'd you put the spoon in there? I said, so you could scoop up the marshmallows. They were excited all night. They gave me hugs and thanked me so much, and I went, oh, my gosh, that was better than getting a new dress any day.

00:35:32.730 --> 00:38:27.480
Yeah. Those simple things, watching them become whole and see pieces get put back together in their life, that will make them productive human beings. If that's all I ever do in my life, is help two people be productive citizens, be leaders in their own way to heal and know how to cope with that trauma and recover and acknowledge it and understand where to get help. Yeah. How to get help. Because we've all been through trauma. We've all been through trauma of some kind, and we shove it away somewhere and try and hide from it and create perfect lives, avoid all the pain that we've gone through. And when we don't deal with that, we become isolated human beings and we can't connect with the rest of the world. Right, right. You know, every grandmother out there hearing your story is saying, teach me your ways. How did they put away their toys? How did you do that? Well, those are the stories we all can share with each other, right? Yeah. We learn these little miracles through this process. They're very simple. And I just love when I speak with experts on all sorts of topics, I love it when they give me a little tip, simple tip that I can use in practice. There was a therapist I was speaking with yesterday. She started as an educator. She got into administration, and now she's a play therapist. And she believes that she found her gift in doing that. And I said, what simple thing could I do to encourage them and invite them in a way that feels safe to talk about something that they're happy about or something that they're not happy about? She said, just notice when your child is happy during the day when they are disrupted or when they are frustrated or upset and go to them and say, I notice that doing that activity didn't make you very happy or it got you upset. Do you want to talk about that? Or just noticing and acknowledging that to them, children will usually respond, it's such a simple thing. And I've been doing that since yesterday. When I talked with her, I asked my grandson, I said, I noticed that you really don't like fruit in your cereal.

00:38:28.739 --> 00:39:11.179
And he kind of talked about it a little bit and said, but I really like this, and I like that and that communication. And the children knowing that we're interested, they will usually be very open about why they don't like something or why they do like something, and it helps build trust between you. Yeah. Simple, little. I just love hearing those tips anyway. And it gives them autonomy. Yes. You know, this is who I am. This is what I like, and that's good. You're allowed to have those feelings, and you should learn how to say your wants and your desires and your needs to people. Good for you.

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What have been some of your greatest. Resources during all of those experiences that you've had with raising children other than your own?

00:39:22.079 --> 00:39:44.425
Well, when we got our daughter and when we got our grandson, there wasn't a lot of resources to help at all. When we got my daughter, it was just love her through it, your love, you know, just love her through it. And love was not enough. When I got my grandson, when DC's dropped him off, there was no support.

00:39:44.538 --> 00:40:28.356
There was no services. There wasn't any kind of help out there. So what I had to do was rely on friends and really be honest with people in my friend group and in my family about what I was going through and what we were dealing with. And I had to, I had to make a concerted effort to search out services that could, that could help support him and support me. So my biggest, my biggest support system would be my friends, you know, at the beginning of it, and still, they're still my biggest. I mean, they, they would just let me vent. They'd say, I'll hold your hair back while you just vent.

00:40:28.387 --> 00:41:01.155
Go, you know. So my mom was awesome. She was a great help, too. I think along the way, you know, as we go through our journey, there's somebody in every stage of our life that's a big influence for that moment. But I think overall, it would be my mom. And then my husband was a big influence in my life. I have, obviously, friends and things, but they're my two biggest influences. It's been so great getting to know you, and I'm looking forward to more conversations together.

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Yes. Stacey Sanchez has a website@stacysanchez.com, and I will put that in the show notes. Thank you. And you have a Facebook site, grandparents parenting. Again, perspectives on parenting grants. And your new book that you're writing. Yes, I'm writing a book called Diamond Life Lessons from the ball field, and it is about my years of coaching and playing baseball. I take those lessons that I've learned on the field and I apply them to our spiritual life, our everyday lives and our spiritual lives, like how to hit a curveball or another chapter would be muscle memory about the importance of practice and, you know, those kind of things. And so I see this as a book where the grandparent can be sitting on the sides of the diamond while the kids are practicing baseball and doing a little devotion. And then on the way home there's a part that's called doing it together or something similar to that where they can take it and use it to spur on conversation with their grandchildren or their children. So I'm looking forward to that coming out. I think it'll be a great resource for parents and for grandparents.

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I love that. I believe it will. Great. When is that book released? I'm sending it to the publisher, hopefully by September. So I'm hoping by Christmas. Great Christmas gift. Exactly. Thanks, Stacy. Thank you. I encourage all the grandparents out there that are listening to come join the Facebook group grandparents parenting again because I want to encourage and uplift those that are doing this because it is really a tough job to raise a grandchild at the age, you know, where we should be enjoying life and we're a little more tired and you know, it's harder. So I want to encourage those people because they are heroes. They're missionaries to the next generation, and they're heroes to those children.

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Thanks so much for joining us today for another episode of grandparents raising grandchildren. Nurturing through adversity I encourage you to share your challenges and your successes with us. Your story is undoubtedly one someone else needs to hear.

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You can submit your stories to the links provided in the podcast information. Your contributions will enrich upcoming conversations, creating a more supportive community in which we can learn and grow together. If you enjoyed this show, please share it with a friend that needs to hear. And if you love the show and you're listening on a broadcasting platform like Apple or Spotify, just scroll down in your app and please leave us a review. Does your child show leadership potential? Do you ever wonder how we can. Better empower our kids, not just to survive, but to be better leaders of tomorrow? Join us next week on grandparents raising grandchildren nurturing through adversity as we delve into a journey of sparking curiosity and nurturing leadership in our children with the inspiring story of an historian, retired educator, and author who is paving the way for young critical thinkers.