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Limitless Spirit
Feeling stuck in the daily grind? Longing for a spiritually rich and meaningful life? Limitless Spirit with Helen Todd is for those who crave a deeper faith, a greater purpose, and opportunities to serve beyond themselves. Through powerful stories and real conversations, this podcast explores how stepping out in faith—whether through mission trips, discipleship, or simply saying ‘yes’ to God—can change your life from surviving to thriving.
Limitless Spirit
Cancer Saved Her Life
What happens when everything you think defines you is suddenly stripped away? In this episode, Erika Allison Lambro shares her remarkable journey from rejecting her Christian upbringing to embracing an LGBTQ identity, Buddhist spirituality, and activism against the church—only to have it all crumble after a cancer diagnosis at age 40.
For 25 years, she distanced herself from her family and faith, even writing a book titled "Gay the Pray Away" challenging the church's stance on sexuality. Yet despite constructing these new identities, something was still missing.
The turning point came through cancer—not as something God saved her from, but as what God used to save her life.
This conversation offers hope to anyone questioning who they truly are. As Erika puts it: "If you allow your constructed identities to crumble, as scary as it may feel, what you're going to find is an even more solid ground underneath—that you are a child of God."
If her story resonates with you, or you feel called to share your testimony through missions as she did in Albania, visit rfwma.org to explore opportunities to serve.
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Welcome to Limitless Spirit, a weekly podcast with host Helen Todd, where she interviews guests about pursuing spiritual growth, discovering life's purpose through serving others and developing a deeper faith in Christ.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Limitless Spirit, where we explore the stories of transformation, purpose and faith that shape our lives. I'm your host, helen Todd. Today we're diving deep into one of the most personal and often painful areas of the human experience identity. My guest is Erica Lambrough. She was raised in a Christian home, but as a teenager she walked away from the faith and embraced a homosexual identity, became a passionate advocate for LGBTQ and wrote a book titled Gay the Pray Away, challenging the church and its stance on sexuality. Along the way, she explored Buddhism, moved, moved away from her family and spent 25 years building a life apart from god she once knew. But when erica was diagnosed with cancer, everything she had built, every identity she had clung to, began to crumble, and in that place of brokenness she encountered something greater.
Speaker 2:This is a powerful conversation about the false selves we construct, the pain of searching and the beauty of being found, not just by God but in God. Stay with us for an honest, redemptive and deeply human journey. With us for an honest, redemptive and deeply human journey. Good morning, erika. Welcome to the Limitless Spirit. How are you today? Thank you so much for inviting me on today. So I love how God connected you with World Missions Alliance, our ministry, and essentially that's how we met, and it was through a dream. God can do some crazy things through our dreams, so do you mind sharing this with our listeners? It's a wild story.
Speaker 3:I would be so excited to share it. Yeah, so I was not planning to go on a mission trip. In fact, that wasn't the first thing, that wasn't even the last thing on my mind. But, yes, I had a dream and it was short, but it was very specific. And in the dream I was rushing through the airport to get on an airplane very specifically for Albania and very specifically for a mission trip. And I woke up and I'm like that is very where even is Albania? That was my first question. I had to look it up on a map and see what it was.
Speaker 3:And I called my sister, who has been a mentor for me in the faith, and kind of talked to her about it and it was like, what is this? Is God trying to get me to go on a mission trip? And she said, well, just do some research. I know this great organization called World Mission Alliance and you should look on their website and see if they have any trips going to Albania. And the coolest part of this whole story is that I contacted you guys because I did notice that you had a trip going to Albania, but the trip was full.
Speaker 3:So I wrote to you guys and I just said, hey, I had this dream. I don't know what it means. It may mean nothing, I may have eaten enchiladas last night, but I had this dream. And if you have a wait list or if you're doing another trip, I'd love to be on the wait list. And your people wrote me back and said, well, we were full for this trip that's coming up in a month, but we just had somebody drop out and the date that that person had dropped out was Wednesday. And when I looked back to the night, I had the dream it was Wednesday night. So it was like just so, so amazed. So, god, so God.
Speaker 2:And God's timing is so precise. You know. You had the dream on Wednesday. The person dropped off the team on Wednesday. To be honest, we don't even go to Albania every year. We're not going to Albania next year. We didn't go to Albania last year, but God.
Speaker 3:But God, I know, I know, and when stuff like that happens, it really like you can't help but pay attention, because it's not just commonplace Like it's not commonplace that I'm thinking about the country Albania or having dreams about the country Albania, and it's not commonplace that this trip even was happening. So it was clear that God was moving and I needed to pay attention.
Speaker 2:Well, in miraculous ways, god made a way for you in a very short time to go and you went and I'm excited for us to talk about what happened there. But we're going to jump into the beginning of your story. First, because just a few years ago, if someone would tell you that you will be going on a mission trip sharing the gospel in another country, you probably would have laughed at this idea, am I right?
Speaker 3:You are so right, I am a completely new creation, different person than the person I was even two years ago.
Speaker 2:So you know, you were an activist in LGBTQ community. You were a Buddhist. You had an identity that doesn't really align with sharing the gospel on the mission trip. But I'm excited to look back at your story because I think it's a very beautiful story and beautiful in the way how God pursues us, no matter where we are or even if we're running in the opposite direction from him. We are, or even if we're running in the opposite direction from him. So I also think that it's a story about identity, and that's a subject that is very important in our lives from the very beginning. So you were born and grew up in a Christian home, so what was the first time you started looking at your identity? What prompted that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was one of those moments. It was when I was a teenager and it was the first time I'd actually been exposed to other people in the world who claimed to be gay and were practicing LGBTQ lifestyles, and it was one of those moments where I had always, up until that point, felt different, felt like I didn't really fit in. I didn't, I didn't seem like I looked like and was wired like other people. So when this alternative option was presented to me, it was really easy to make a story in my mind that connected all the dots. It was like oh, that's why I really loved hanging out with that coach and oh, that's why, you know, I like to do sports rather than other things Like it.
Speaker 3:Just I could use this explanation or label to make so much of my life that didn't make sense all of a sudden make sense. And so I started to really question, like, maybe, maybe I'm gay, maybe this is who I am, and that was kind of the very beginning part of the journey. Obviously, I was in a Christian household, so this was not something that was accepted or promoted or celebrated, but this was the first time that I started grappling with the well, who am I really?
Speaker 2:And so, on the other hand, the Christian upbringing that you experienced. How did that impact you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it just created a lot of conflict in me, like I knew. Certainly I didn't have a depth of knowledge of the Bible. I mean, I was still a teenager and I think I was doing youth group things and going to church, but I don't I wouldn't necessarily say I had a deep personal relationship where I knew Jesus closely. I think I was just kind of in the context of religion, of what that looked like. So there was nothing really for me to lean on other than what the people around me were, you know, saying was true and not true. And so, yeah, that's I kind of.
Speaker 3:When my parents found out that I had been choosing a gay lifestyle, they confronted me about it and asked me if that what was going on. And we ended up going to talk to the pastor and the pastor made it really clear that from his perspective as somebody who is deeply, you know, in study of God and the scriptures, that that was not in alignment for my life and who God was calling me to be. But in my mind I was like, well, I look around this church and I see a lot of people who are, you know, they, just they. I don't feel like I fit in here, whereas this community over here is telling me we all belong and love. It's all about love and it's all about being yourself and being unique, and so holding those two things up the one of be yourself and be who you know, who you're uniquely meant to be seemed like a stronger message coming from the LGBTQ community than it did coming from the Christian environment. I was personally in.
Speaker 2:So do you think, in a sense, it was a rebellion against God, or maybe a rebellion against your parents?
Speaker 3:I don't think so. It doesn't, because I was always the kid who was like I was the good kid. In fact, this was a really disturbing time in my life because it was the first time that I was like quote in trouble. You know, like I had always gotten the good grades. I was always the well-behaved person, polite to people. I actually loved approval. I loved adults approval. So I always was a pretty good kid, and this was the first time that I really was all of a sudden being looked at by people as there was something wrong with me, and so that was part of the struggle.
Speaker 3:Is I really wanted this to be okay? Because it felt like somehow, the way I told the story to myself, I began to believe that this really was who I was, and so then it was like well, why are these people telling me that this isn't who I am or that I can't be this? And it was more confusion than rebellion, of like. But I do think this is who I am and everything I'm seeing about this community aligns with me and what I'm feeling, and so it wasn't so much rebellion as like I don't understand why this is in conflict.
Speaker 2:So not only you embraced the LGBTQ lifestyle, you became an advocate for that lifestyle, and so you wrote a book called Gay the Prey Away. And what is the book about? What prompted you to write this book? Obviously, it was written out of pain, yeah. And what is the book about in? What prompted you to write this book? Obviously, it was written out of pain, yeah. And what is the book about in a nutshell?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when I was coming out of that teenager experience, I was really looking for other like, for alternative interpretations of scripture that would allow me to make peace with this conflict in me. And it was a time and it still is a time, when you can find churches that will say, oh, it's okay to be gay. You can find that. You can find books that will say, well, those verses didn't actually mean that and what they really meant was this. And so I got really into all the alternative interpretations of some of the parts of Scripture that we use to justify why God says we shouldn't live that lifestyle, and I was really wanting those to be true because it allowed me to stay in the lifestyle that felt like who I was. And so when I would find those alternative interpretations, what I noticed started happening. I didn't notice this until later, when I actually got saved, but what was happening at the time was I started really questioning the Bible, because if every one of those verses could be misinterpreted, then that means the entire Bible could be misinterpreted. Like what is truth? What can I trust in the Bible, felt flawed, or like maybe somebody had interpreted something wrong. All of a sudden, it's like I lost this anchor in my life. I lost this, this plumb line of like something I could rely on to tell me right from wrong when I didn't know, or truth from from lies when I didn't know. And so, without that guide, I kind of had to figure it out for my own, for myself, and I still had Christian morals, but now I didn't have the Christian belief system anymore. I started to question well, maybe Jesus isn't even the Savior, maybe we're not even sinners, because if they say being gay is a sin, but these people say it's not a sin, then maybe none of this stuff is a sin.
Speaker 3:It was very easy for me to walk farther and farther and farther away, and the farther away I walked, the more angry I got at Christianity, because it felt like that was a very black and white belief system. And now I'm walking in all this gray space and the black and white felt like why are we doing this? Why are we causing people so much pain and so much harm? And so my book and my advocacy platform that I got on was one of very.
Speaker 3:I was criticizing the church. I was saying that we were causing a lot of harm. The church was causing a lot of harm to the LGBTQ community and to other people who didn't fit in and felt marginalized, and that us being so black and white and judgmental and unaccepting was creating suffering and pain in other people, which, ironically, is one of the reasons I was so drawn to some of the Buddhist practices and when you said earlier I was Buddhist, I was practicing Buddhist, worshiping Buddha, but I was very much into the nonviolent types of Buddhism that came from Thich Nhat Hanh and other teachers who were preaching like let's not hate each other, let's not cause harm to each other, and it I was going to have a platform and write a book and help people who are being judged by the church really honestly come back to God, but in a way that didn't have all the baggage of pain of a judgmental church behind it.
Speaker 2:So I think it's interesting, because that need for spiritual connection with God never left you. You were just trying to fill it with something else and somehow reconcile your choice of a different lifestyle, you know, with still the need to have God in your life.
Speaker 3:That's it 100%. I even would love to comment on that because I used to joke that I was the gay person in the spiritual conversations. Because I joke that I was the gay person in the spiritual conversations because I was like I felt like I was the only person who was identifying as gay, who actually cared about God and spirituality and like wanting to have spirituality in my life, but then I was also the only like I was the only spiritual person in the gay community, the only gay person in the spiritual community. It was like I still didn't fit in. All my efforts to fit in, I was like I still don't fit in. I don't even fit in in the LGBTQ community. I don't fit in anywhere.
Speaker 2:Or even in the Buddhist community, because you weren't a classical Buddhist either. Right. So it seemed like building this new identity was not super satisfying. So, looking back, did these identities that you constructed, did they bring you peace or sense of control?
Speaker 3:No, in fact that's really how things started to crumble is that I got to 40 years old and I'm like, okay, everything, I, all these paths that I thought were going to bring me this, this satisfaction, everything hasn't like. You know it. I thought if I just found the right relationship partner uh, intimate partner then you know I'd finally find it. If I found the right job, I'd finally find it. And it just never did. And it was. It was actually shocking to me because I'm like you know, by 40, you've tried, like I could explain okay, maybe I found the wrong partner first, but eventually you'll get the right one. Or, you know, maybe I found the wrong career first, but eventually you'll get the right one. But as I was getting to 40, I'm like, oh well, I still haven't found it, then maybe I'm not looking in the right place.
Speaker 2:And then your wall literally collapsed when you were diagnosed with cancer no-transcript.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean this is something I can say in hindsight. I would say in the moment I wasn't in this place. But yeah, all of a sudden I got this cancer diagnosis and it was completely out of the blue and it completely shocked me and rocked my world on so many accounts. Like I was, I was very healthy, I was very fit, I was very active on on and I was, I just everything. I had a very positive mindset, like there. I really didn't have any factors that would make sense for me to have cancer.
Speaker 3:So, because I still had a deep spirituality in me, even though it was misguided and I had walked away from the true spirituality, there was still a seeker in me. And so when this cancer diagnosis came, I had people in my life who were saying, look, this is no big deal. You know, people get a breast cancer diagnosis often. You could actually have surgery this weekend and it would be all behind you and you could just go on with your life. But there was something deep in my spirit that was saying, no, that's not why you have this, this isn't a diagnosis, it's an accident. It isn't here because you're just supposed to have a quick surgery and go on with life, like somebody's trying to get my attention. God is trying to get my attention and I just knew it.
Speaker 3:I just knew that this was happening for a reason and I didn't know what the reason was. But I will say that I felt like there was a kindness along with this diagnosis, that I just had a knowing in me that the thing I'm looking for it's like I really felt like the message was the thing you're looking for is on the other side of this journey, if you'll go on this journey with me. I felt like God was saying that to me, like, yes, you have cancer, but the what you're looking for, what you've been seeking for your whole life, is on the other side of this journey, if you'll go with me on a journey and so what did your first step back to God look like?
Speaker 2:Like? Well, it had to have been very difficult, since you were estranged from your family for all these years. As you were building this different identity for yourself, what did you do?
Speaker 3:I was so entrenched in my identities that the cancer had to actually strip them away from me. I wasn't ready to walk away from anything and let them go, but just God moved. Like like one of the things God did was during this cancer journey. I had moved out of the house I was living in, which was in the relationship that I was in, to focus on healing, and so God just created a space for me of the relationship I was in which I wouldn't have been able to probably pry myself away from on my own. But God did that with the cancer diagnosis. So now I'm living solo and I'm starting to just question things like who am I if I'm not healthy and fit like I've always thought I was? I have cancer now. So who am I? Because I thought I was this person, but now I have this. So, just like God started to strip down all these identities and walls I had put up, and one of the ones God went for was my LGBTQ identity or identification, and the way he did that you know God is going to meet every one of us exactly the way we need to be met. In my case, he put a person in my life who just very casually, wasn't trying to be offensive in any way, but it was a guy in my life and he said to me you know you keep saying you're gay, but I just don't see it and that seems very simple, that seems like no big deal, just a line. But for somebody whose identity was so rooted in that and I even had a platform where I was out talking to people about being gay as my livelihood For him to say that it shocked me, it like rocked my world. I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm the person who walks in the room and everybody's like oh, she's gay. Like to have somebody who innocently, who didn't know anything about the gay community, look at me as just a person and say, oh no, you seem very feminine to me, you seem very like a normal woman to me. I just it was shocking and it made me start questioning things. And so, just like identity after identity started to go down, one of the identities I was really attached to was that I was going to heal myself of cancer. It was part of my spiritual journey. I was on is like okay, if I can self-actualize enough, using new age spiritual principles and other things, I can heal myself of this cancer and, despite what I did, it wasn't working. The tumor was not going away and I was measuring it and I was, you know, doing all the things and it wasn't going away. So that was another stripping down of like, okay, maybe what you think is true is it true? So all of that happened and where I think the door really opened was I got to a point where my family said will you come back to Texas and live with us as you're healing from this?
Speaker 3:And I was fighting that tooth and nail because I'm like the last thing I want as a new age spiritual believer is to be around this negative energy of my family, because they're all Christian and they're all judgmental and they're all going to tell me what I can do and what I can't do. And I can't be around that right now because if I go in their energy I'm never going to heal myself. But I had spent all my money. I was no longer speaking publicly. My platform kind of had to pause when I was fighting cancer, not to mention now I'm like well, I don't even know if I'm gay anymore, so I don't feel right about going out in the world and speaking about being gay. So, like my job stopped, my life stopped and I started running out of money. So now I'm like, oh man, I guess I am going to have to go live with my family. I'm gonna be that 40 something year old who's living in the backyard of their parents' house, like what I felt. Like a total failure, like what have I done with my life? My life is a mess. That's kind of how I felt. And so I came back to Texas and I told my parents look, I am here to heal my relationship with you guys and I'm so grateful that you're being kind and taking me in right now in this moment of need that I have. But the one topic that's off limits to talk about is religion. We're not doing it because it's just going to create a fight. I don't want to hear about your Christianity. I don't want you to shove it down my throat. Not interested. And you know how. You know God's just laughing. I think he just laughs.
Speaker 3:So I'm sitting here and I'm starting to get to know my sister again, like I'd been estranged from my family for like 25 years. It's not like I never talked to them. I would come to the big holiday things or you know big, important things, but we couldn't be more different and so I didn't really get to know them. I didn't let them know me. We had a lot of walls up.
Speaker 3:But as I'm spending more time with my sister, I'm starting to notice like her version of Christianity is very different than what I remembered from my childhood. Like my childhood and it might have just been, I was immature and didn't understand it. But my sister is a spirit-filled Christian and she has dreams and she like she gets guidance for people, like she has prophetic words coming through her. Like this was always part of my new age world, but I didn't realize it was part of Christianity. I thought I had to leave Christianity and so if I was getting things like dreams or feeling like intuitive knowings about things, I thought that wasn't God, that wasn't Christianity.
Speaker 3:When I started observing my sister and how deeply rooted in faith she was and how deeply rooted in Christ she was and not to mention she had a breast cancer scare the same time I did and hers actually did get miraculously healed and mine didn't my new agey, I'm going to heal myself versus her Christian prayers she had the miracle that I was looking for. So I'm like what is going on here and I just started to get curious and I told my sister I'm like I didn't know that was Christianity. And she's like, yeah, this is it. Like I know the way we grew up wasn't a spirit-filled church, but when you bring the spirit and the word together, this is Christianity. And I'm like I want to know more about this. And she's like I want to know more about this. And she's like I want you to come with me to a conference. And the conference she took me to was a missionary conference, so it was. You know, it was through Antioch Church actually, and they have a whole movement of Christian.
Speaker 2:It was in Waco, texas, but so I went to this conference. My son is involved with Antioch. He attends Antioch DC Church, so I'm very, very familiar. They're awesome.
Speaker 3:You're very familiar. Yeah, so they have a conference called World Mandate every year and my sister had gone to it for 20, I think 20 years and she was like I want you to come with me. And I was in this kind of like I'm partially open, but also still have my old cynicism in me and I'm like, okay, well, if I'm supposed to go, I'm broke right now. So God's going to have to or somebody's going to have to pay for it. And wouldn't you know, a ticket shows up, a hotel room shows up. So I'm like, all right, I think God wants me there, I'm going to surrender, I'm going to go. So I go to this conference and some man was speaking on stage and my sister said to me, she nudged, she elbowed me and she said, hey, I've been at this conference 20 years and it's usually the same speakers, but I've never seen this guy before and I think he's here to talk to you and I'm like, let's see what he says.
Speaker 3:The first words out of his mouth were when I was growing up, I always felt different. I'm like that's me. I can relate to that. That was my story. I always felt different. And he said in his life he realized the reason he felt different was because God had set him apart for God's purposes, for his purposes, and in this man's case it was to be a missionary. But in general it was just the concept of being different because I'm set apart. It resonated with me so deeply because I have always felt kind of set apart and I didn't understand it. And so it just like a light bulb went on in that moment and I remember praying this prayer.
Speaker 3:In that moment I was like, okay, god, you're going to have to help me, because I have a lot of beliefs in me. I have a lot of beliefs of what's right and what's wrong and what's true and what's not true, and about self-actualization and about who I am and who you are, god. I have a lot of beliefs. The same way that cancer stripped my identities down. I'm asking you, god, to empty me. Like, will you just empty me of every belief I have, whether it's good or bad, whether it's right or wrong, even the good ones? Empty them and only fill me back with truth. And I don't even know what truth is, but I'm asking you to fill me back with truth.
Speaker 3:And then another man spoke at this conference and he talked about the Bible and he said Billy Graham had a crisis of faith and in Billy Graham's crisis of faith, he had a moment where he had to put the Bible on a step and get lower than the Bible and say, from this point on, if I have a question or problem about something I read in this book, instead of questioning the book, I'm going to question me. That was profound for me because I had always said well, I have a problem with this in the Bible and I have a problem with this in a Bible, and I have a problem with when God did that to those people and when God did that to those people and the thought of wait, what if I instead questioned my own thinking and my own thoughts, like what if I just don't understand something? And God is supreme and I'm the one who's flawed in thinking, rather than I'm supreme and God is the one who has flawed actions or practices? It was revolutionary and from that point on, I told my sister I want to go back to the Bible, I want to read it again, I want to understand it differently, but I have blocks, I think it's been manipulated.
Speaker 3:And she said well, let's watch the case for faith and let's dive into some of the apologetics that have proven that the Bible is actually true and has actually not been manipulated by man, like I believe it has. And she walked every step of that journey with me. We unpacked all my wrong views, we unpacked all my questions and skepticism into the point where I'm like, okay, god, I believe. And I started reading the Bible and I saw it so differently than I've ever seen it before. And it's just been one thing after another since then.
Speaker 2:And how incredible it is that once you allowed God to rebuild your true identity or rather reveal your true identity, because it was always there it was just hidden under the pile of lies. So once that true identity was revealed, he sends you on a mission trip to Albania, the country you didn't even know existed really, or knew very little about. And so how your experience? I didn't get to be with you on this trip, but I know that you were very impactful. You were a great asset to the team. Very impactful, you were a great asset to the team, but I want you for our listeners to hear from your perspective how did you feel that God used you in this newly discovered identity of yours?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did not think I was ready to go on a trip. I mean, I was just baptized less than a year ago, so like I kind of thought I'm in the phase of just learning and taking everything in and maybe later I'll be able to be on mission for God. But right now I'm still just a baby and I have a lot to learn and I have a lot to relearn and unlearn. And so when this calling happened, I was a little bit curious like God, what are you wanting from me in this? Like how can I possibly be in a place where I could serve you now, at this stage? And I think one thing he was doing was immersing me in a training. I really do think that, because what's great about World Mission Alliance is you're in a community with so many other believers of all different walks and different levels and stages in their faith journey. So I was on this trip with some very deeply spiritual believers who have been walking with the Lord for a very long time, and I felt like there was a lot of mentoring going on for me personally, like I got to be mentored by a lot of these very deeply faith-filled and just spirit-led people, and that was amazing. But what I think I was being called to help with is I have a very enthusiastic personality I always have. It's just how I'm wired and I didn't realize that part of mission work was supporting and encouraging the local church on the ground.
Speaker 3:I just had this very skewed vision of what a missionary did. I kind of had a vision that they go out into areas and there's a little bit of a white savior complex to them and they go in and they tell other people, look, our way is the bright way and your way is the wrong way, and get on board and I didn't want to have any part in that. That felt mean to me and not great. But when I learned that really what we were doing mostly on this mission trip was aligning with the local church that's already on the ground, which are local Albanians who are born and raised in Albania, who care so much for their people and their community and their countrymen that they're bringing them the good news and they're tired and they've been working hard and they've been the ones who are sowing those sowing the harvest right, like sowing the fields.
Speaker 3:You know what is it? We sow in tears but we reap in joy. Right, they're sowing in tears right now and to get to be a part of a group that drops in on them and just feeds into them and encourages them and prays with them and strengthens them and rejuvenates what they're doing and the effort they're doing. I loved that part of it. It was great. I was so inspired by those who are on the ground doing the work and just to see them light up at the thought of seeing all of us come in as reinforcements for what they're doing. It was so wonderful.
Speaker 2:You know, your journey, as painful as it has been for you personally, puts you in a unique position to be an advocate and an encourager for people who maybe are facing an identity crisis, and it doesn't have to be necessarily in the area of sexuality, because we build our identities based on many different things success and all kinds of different values that are not going to withstand necessarily a big crisis in life, and so if we have listeners who are facing something like this in their lives right now, what words of advice or encouragement do you have for them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I continued to grapple with identity through the whole cancer journey until I got to a point where I'm like I really don't even know what truth is anymore and it felt like such a dark, a darkness. It was almost like there was no floor underneath me because everything that I was standing on as solid started to crumble. And that was a terrifying feeling, feeling and I think anybody who's struggling with identity where there's anything that they've been grasping to as this is the truth when that starts to either get holes poked in it or to crumble, it can feel like you're completely falling in a void of nothingness and it's terrifying. And when I was in that void of nothingness, jesus showed up to me and he said you're looking for the truth, I am the truth. And then he said and your identity? You are a child of God. Like that's who I was, like I don't know who I am anymore. And he said you are a child of God, that's who I say you are. You've said you're all these other things, but who I say you are is a child of God. And I he just like.
Speaker 3:That was the clear answer and I just knew it once it landed that that's the truth and everything else was just things I had put on on top of it. So that was, that is what I would say to anybody who's listening, who, whether it be something that feels core to your identity, of like, oh well, I could never not be this thing, or I could never not identify as that. Or whether it even just be something that you're grasping to like, oh well, my security comes this. If you allow that to crumble, as scary as it may feel, what you're going to find is that there's even a more solid ground underneath all that that is child of God and standing in the truth of the way, the truth and the life. Who is Jesus?
Speaker 2:That is beautiful. So I have to ask the final question Are you cancer-free today?
Speaker 3:I am cancer-free. Today I am. I became cancer-free on my grandmother's birthday, which is fascinating. And what's even more fascinating is part of becoming cancer-free. I didn't want to just like, I didn't want to forget this moment in time. This has been such a significant moment Like it feels like God didn't save my life from cancer. He used cancer to save my life, if that makes sense. Like it isn't even just I'm cancer-free, it's like my life has been saved through this experience. I don't mean my physical life, I mean my life has been saved through this experience.
Speaker 3:And when I had my first, I got to have my first Easter as a believer, which was a wild experience, because Easter is just such a celebration of what Christianity is all about. And I remember sitting in the big sanctuary and you know it's the day when the church is packed, because everybody who doesn't go to church all of a sudden starts coming to church on that day. And I'm looking around this congregation and there's thousands in the room. And I remember in that moment Jesus met me there and he said, hey, I left all those 99 to come get the one to come get you. I left them all to come get you because I cared about you because I wanted you here with me. I didn't wanna do another Easter without you, because this is a joyful day and my joy is complete when you're here with me.
Speaker 2:That's an incredible story, erica. Thank you for sharing it, being very transparent and I have no doubt it's going to encourage and inspire people to pursue their identity as a child of God Amen. Pursue their identity as a child of God Amen. Erica's story is a reminder that we are not the sum of our choices, our desires or our failures. Our truest identity isn't something we achieve or assert. It's something we receive, and it can be only found in the gaze of the one who created us.
Speaker 2:If you've ever been wrestling with who you are, where you belong or where you can ever find your way back to faith, let this be your invitation. You're not beyond the reach of grace, as Erica has shown us, even after decades away, there's always a way home. Thank you for listening to Limitless Spirit. If your heart is stirred to take the gospel to the nations, I encourage you to visit our website, rfwmaorg. Just like Erica, you can find an opportunity to serve in the Great Commission and share your personal testimony with someone who is looking for hope and love. If this episode moved, you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe to our podcast, leave us a review and stay connected as we continue to explore how God meets us right where we are and leads us beyond where we ever thought we could go, until next time. I'm Helen Todd.
Speaker 1:Limitless Spirit Podcast is produced by World Missions Alliance. We believe that changed lives change lives. If your life was transformed by Christ, you are equipped to help others experience this transformation. Christ called his followers to make disciples across the world. World Missions Alliance gives you an opportunity to do this through short-term missions in over 32 countries across the globe. If you want to help those who are hurting and hopeless and discover your greater purpose in serving, check out our website, rfwmaorg, and find out how to get involved.