024 – Donna Jones – Healthy Conflict, Peaceful Life

Kim: Welcome back. So glad that you’re here. You are going to be in for a huge treat today, and you are going to be glad that you listened to this episode because we are going to address how do you resolve conflict in a healthy way, something that all of us are faced with every day as we navigate our lives on this planet. Donna Jones is our guest, and you’re going to get to hear about her book recently released on Amazon, and she speaks all over helping individuals understand how to resolve this conflict and lead a peaceful life. You’ll also want to follow her on her podcast, which is called Just What I Needed.    I was fortunate to be a guest on her podcast that was released in January 2024. Super grateful for that opportunity. So stay tuned and so glad that you’ve got those AirPods in and you’re listening to The Generous Girl.

Welcome back to The Generous Girl Podcast. Today it is my treat to have my dear friend Donna Jones here with us. Donna and her husband, JP Jones, planted the church called Crossline Church in Laguna Hills in 2005, close to 20 years ago, and Donna recently released another book. This one is entitled Healthy Conflict, Peaceful Life, and we’re going to explore that during this episode and how that affects the two pillars of family and friendships. She has three children and multiple grandchildren with one on the way as well as an upcoming wedding, so her plate is full. Welcome, welcome, Donna.

Donna Jones: Oh, I’m so glad to be here, Kim.

Kim: It is a treat. We go way, way back to college days where we were in sororities that were next door to each other on Hill Guard Avenue, and I just love to see… I know. I love to see God’s faithfulness over the years and just watching the life that you and your husband have built in Southern California, the many, many lives that you all have touched from just your faithfulness and your study of God’s word. I know that you’re frequently on an airplane going to speak to women’s retreats and recently got back from the Bay Area. So love how God uses you both. And I love that we have this brief time together on this podcast. So thank you for your generosity and sharing your time with our listener.

Donna Jones: Oh, well, I’m super excited because I’m passionate. This whole idea about being a generous girl, I mean, I think that’s just the heart on the heart of God. So thank you so much for letting me be on your show and share.

Kim: Yes, so help the listener understand how you got to where you are. How did you know you wanted to be a woman’s Bible teacher, currently teaching leader at Crossline, author of books? We’d love to hear a little bit about your calling that way. 

Donna Jones: Yeah, well, Kim, I didn’t really set out to do that, to be honest with you. But as things go… And I think all your listeners will be able to relate to this. As your life just kind of unfolds, small doors open that at the time you don’t think are super significant, but then in retrospect, you realize, oh, that was one small step that God was opening for me, and because I said yes to that small thing and learned and grew, then He opened another thing and I said yes to that. And even though I maybe even felt ill-equipped or scared, and then he opens another thing and another thing and another thing, and then pretty soon you find your calling because I don’t know really that for most people, God just drops down your calling from the sky. More often I think it is a process of determining that just one little small step of obedience at a time. So I think that’s what happened to me, and I got invited to actually lead a Bible study for women who were new to the Bible or who wanted to revisit the basics. And I said, “Okay, I don’t know how many will come, but sure I’ll do that.” And for that particular Bible study, 75 women came the first year and 150 came the second year, and 300 women came the third year. And I realized, wow, there is a huge, huge need for women to just have a friendly normal face that would explain the Bible to them in very practical terms for women who maybe even grew up in the church but realized, gosh, there’s a lot of gaps in my understanding. Or maybe women who never grew up in the church but wanted to join a Bible study. And it was like, but I don’t know anything. So where do I start? And actually, Kim, one of my other books, Seek: A Woman’s Guide to Meeting God came out of that, me leading that Bible study and just seeing the need for women to have some sort of resource for beginners in the faith or those who wanted to revisit the basics. So that was kind of the genesis of me sort of becoming a writer and becoming a speaker kind of all over the country. But it just started because somebody said, “Would you lead a Bible study for people who have never opened a Bible for?” And I was like, “Okay, sure.”

Kim: Well, and you took the next step. And again, that is what this whole podcast is about, is taking the next step, becoming more empowered as a female financially with your giving, your generosity. So I think that’s a really great example of he opened a little door, you took a step, you could have been intimidated and just said, “No, I can’t do it.” But instead you took that step and look where you are, fast-forward all these years later and it’s beautiful to see. And I also know at your current church, you all are going through the Bible recap, which is what I’m doing as well with Tara Leigh Cobble, shout out to her and the Bible recap a program that’s on YouVersion just so well done. And I just love to watch how technology now gives us these just opportunities that we didn’t used to have. And you used to have to fly or drive to a women’s event for a whole weekend, and now you can have 10 minutes in the morning and she’s doing her little recap and jumping to God’s Word. And I’m in a text group, accountability group  all around the country with a group of about 10 women. So every Tuesday night I have to report, have I read every day? And with that group it’s like, okay, I got to make sure I do it. And it’s great. I just love… God’s word, in the way He operates is never static, it’s never the same, it’s never cookie cutter. It’s always changing. And I love that, that we get to just kind of grow along with the opportunities.

Donna Jones: Yeah. And it just is saying yes. And going back to your whole premise of being generous, and I think back even just to being asked, would you lead this Bible study? And it was like, I have been given a certain amount of Bible knowledge because I became a Christian as a child. I was raised in a Christian family, right? So I felt a certain stewardship of knowledge that I had been given, just because I had been to church for so long and I’d sat under good Bible teachers for so long and I’d been in the Bible myself for so long. So I thought, well, why would I say no? I mean, I might not know everything, but certainly I know more than maybe these women I’m being asked to lead at that point. So sometimes I think we think have to have it all together, but it’s kind of like, well, no, but I know maybe a little bit more in an area than someone else, so why don’t I just be generous with everything that I’ve been given, all of me? And so that was the beginning.

Kim: So great. And for me doing this podcast, I could have stepped back and said, “I’ve never done this,” but I really, really wanted to have an opportunity to introduce people to people like you. Like I’ve known you and I want the world to know you. So when I knew what my end goal was, okay, it’s going to allow more people to hear Donna Jones’s story, for example. And these different guests, then it gave me the courage to do it. But when I look back at those early recordings and the lighting and just everything, I think, oh, no. But as people say, done is better than perfect, it’s better to just take the step. And then now I read posts and people say, “I’m thinking about starting a podcast.” And I feel like, yes, do it take the next step. And I’ve grown so much as a result of just kind of stepping out in faith. So I love to see what God is doing. And okay, let’s transition, so we have enough time to really unpack this book of yours, Healthy conflict, Peaceful life. And I would love for you to share, because we do always tap into what is some story of adversity that at that moment maybe you felt like you were not thriving, and now fastforward to see what God has done. So I know your first chapter in that book has a lot to do with your story of overcoming adversity.

Donna Jones: Yeah, yeah. Well, I do believe that conflict is one of the biggest contentment killers. It’s one of the biggest confusing areas in a Christian woman’s life, in any woman’s life actually. Because when there’s conflict, it so messes with our souls and our minds. We function on the outside, right? We make dinner and we take the kids to school and we run to Target and we call our moms and we celebrate birthdays. But on the inside we’re playing, okay, how did that happen and why did they say that? And what he said, what she said, what I said, what I wish I’d said. And it’s like this constant replay in our mind. It’s just so consuming, right? This transcript was exported on Mar 26, 2024 – view latest version here. Kim_Moeller_Ep_-_24_Donna Jones Transcript by Rev.com Page 4 of 13 So the first chapter of my book is called The Day I Wanted to Burn Down the Church. And obviously as I mentioned before, I was raised in the church. I love the church. My husband’s a pastor. We’re church planters, but that also means that we’ve seen literally everything. There’s nothing we haven’t experienced or seen. And so,,,

Kim: You can’t make this stuff up.

Donna Jones: You can’t make this stuff up, right? And so years ago, we worked for a church and it was a great church, but the leadership decided to change. And when that happened, people started jockeying for power. And unbeknownst to us, my husband and I kind of got caught in the middle of it, and we were mischaracterized, misunderstood, mishandled, I mean, and we even saw some out-and-out lying going on. It was just so heartbreaking because it was like, how do Christian people… How are they behaving like this? And the hurt was so deep and the confusion, Kim was so deep. And so, one day I met my best friend for lunch and she wanted to kind of check in with me and find out how I was. And so we found this table and she leans over and she says, “Okay, how are you doing?” And I look around and make sure nobody else can hear what I’m going to say. And I said, “Truthfully, some days I feel like I want to burn the church down.” And she laughed nervously. And she said, “I highly recommend you don’t ever repeat that out loud again.” And I looked back and I realized she was protecting me, but she didn’t understand fully the depth of the hurt and the pain that I had been experiencing for close to a year. And I was just trying to manage the conflict the best I knew how, but it was tapping me dry and I just was at the end. But interestingly, that process of what happened there and the unfolding taught me more about this whole concept of healthy conflict, peaceful life than I could have ever imagined. Because if you were to look back on that scenario, or I look back on that scenario and I think about what did I do? What did I do wrong? One of the biggest mistakes I made was not what people would normally think. And the biggest mistake I made was believing that I couldn’t be happy, be joyful, be content, make good choices until somebody else changed. This was almost subconscious. It’s not like I sat down and wrote this on paper. It was just something I was functioning. I pray, God change them. We’re not the ones lying. God, change them. Do something about this. We’re not the ones gossiping. I’m keeping my mouth shut and this is hard. It’s hard to keep my mouth shut. This is killing me. So change them, Lord, just change them. And I think that your listeners are probably resonating with that because who among us hasn’t prayed, okay, God, just change that spouse, change that child, change that coworker, change that church leadership or change the government, right? And we want somebody else to change. And what I realized was that that prayer was basically saying, “I am handing the keys to my personal peace and wellbeing into your hands. And when you change, then I can experience peace and personal wellbeing.” And I realized I cannot give the keys to my personal peace and spiritual and emotional health to anyone else. It belongs to me. And I realized change and peace, it doesn’t start when someone else changes, it starts when I change. And that began my healing journey and just really realizing, even if you’re caught in conflict with family, with office politics, with just your kids, your spouse, whoever, a friend, that you can’t change someone else. You’re not responsible for their behavior, but we are responsible for ours. And so then we have to go, okay, then how do I handle it well so that I don’t hang my head and regret and shame and think, why did I handle it that way?

Kim: And truly that’s all we have control of is ourselves. We don’t have control over anything else.

Donna Jones: That’s exactly right. And I actually came up with a subtitle to the book before we came up with the title, and I love the subtitle so much because the subtitle is a biblical guide to communicating thoughts, feelings, and opinions with grace, truth and zero regret. And it’s that zero regret part that I think everybody wants because when it comes to conflict, we all have it, we all hate it, but we all long to know how to handle it in a healthy way so it doesn’t create more chaos, and it actually then can create more closeness if it’s handled in a healthy way. So I think everybody can resonate with that. That’s what we want, that’s what we need, and that’s what God helps us do.

Kim: So walk the listener through and walk me through just the steps to how you help the person, the reader do that.

Donna Jones: Yeah. Well, we look at a lot… It’s super practical, super real life. I mean, because my whole goal is that people would go like, “Okay, I get it. I know what to do. And in these sticky situations to make things better, not worse.” One of the chapters is called The single most important thing no conflict can be resolved without. And I came up with this chapter because when my son got married, they had personalized wedding vows. Of course, I didn’t know what their wedding vows were going to be. And I’m listening to my son say his wedding vows to his wife. And one line, it actually just leapt out to me. And I thought, oh, wow, if he does this, if he does this one thing, their relationship is going to not just make it, but it will be an amazing relationship. And the line that he said, Kim, was this, “I promise to seek to understand as much as I seek to be understood.” And I thought, whoa, that’s a game changer in our relationships and especially as it relates to conflict, but in all the relationships with our spouse, with our kids, with our friends, with our coworkers. But what underpins that is an attitude, and it’s the attitude of humility. Because when we’re self-focused, it’s like I just want you to understand my perspective. I just want you to listen to me. I just want you to hear my viewpoint. But humility says, “Okay, I do want to express my thoughts, feelings, and opinions, but I want to seek to understand you as much as I want to seek to be understood.” And when we go into our relationships that way… And in fact, that’s generosity, right? I’m being generous with my listening, I’m being generous with my heart, I’m being generous with my willingness to understand you. So that’s a game changer right there when we have the attitude of humility, where we view relationships as not me versus you, but me and you against the problem. And I think sometimes when you’re  Yeah, yeah, it’s you and me against the problem, not you and me, against you and me. So that’s a big game changer. It’s just a shift in perspective and an attitude and just saying… And again, I can’t make somebody else be humble, but I can say, “Am I being humble here? And am I being willing to listen? Am I looking at my own contribution to this particular problem? Even accidentally?” All those things are part of humility.

Kim: That’s beautiful. And obviously our model of Jesus and all of the ways he was misunderstood and how he continued to be so humble on this earth as the Son of God. And when we look at that and then we look at our problems and we realize what he did for us, that okay, if he did that, then okay, Lord, give me the strength to have that posture of humility as you did. You have put me in this spot. You’ve allowed these relationships, you’ve allowed the conflict. And then what is the part that I can own? Or how is the way that you want me to grow me to change? Because you’re absolutely right. I mean, at the end of the day, we can all be pointing fingers the other direction, but our little life is all in our words that we say our thoughts that we think that caused the feelings to ensue. That’s all we have control of.

Donna Jones: Yeah, exactly. And I think it helps to know what is worth being into conflict about and what is worth just letting go. And one of the things that I like to say is that we don’t make the small things big, but by the same token, we don’t make the big things small. And I think sometimes we get that reversed. We make the small things big, the T-shirt left on the floor, the dishes that were not put away, or the coworker that just has a different personality type, and we make the small things big, but then a lot of times the big things, we make small and we’re like, “I don’t want to address that. I don’t know how I would address that. I don’t know what to say.” Maybe somebody else will say something and we kind of sweep things under the rug or delay addressing them. And then what happens is then those big things become bigger things, and then they eventually cause way more problems than they would’ve caused had we addressed them from the get go. So don’t make the small things big, and all of us have small things by the way, that we think, why am I making this such a big deal? But then sometimes we have big things that we’ve been avoiding and we need to say, “Okay, Lord, your word says if anyone has an offense against your brother or sister, go to them and point out their fault. And if they listen, you’ve won them over.” So there is very much a process that Jesus has said about how we’re to communicate our thoughts, feelings, and opinions. 

Kim: Yes, so good Donna. And I think when you look at just the level, obviously in our society of anxiety in today’s world and stress and unresolved conflict, it’s so tied. We talk about fitness on the podcast and it’s physical, but it’s also emotional. And we have this one temple, this one body, and that kind of unresolved conflict can really eat us up. I mean, it can affect blood pressure and just heart issues, everything. And so it’s not just something for us to take lightly, which is why I think God does address in his word so many ways to guard our heart, take care of our heart, and what do we put in our mind? What do we think? Because that becomes what we are. And so I love that you have written a book. What about your advice for the mom who’s listening with little ones at home and trying to navigate conflict and have a peaceful home?

Donna Jones: Yeah. And isn’t it so funny, before you have children sometimes you’re like, “I never lose my temper. I’m so patient, I’m such a nice person.” And then you have children and it’s like, why won’t this child listen to me? And we go nuts. So I think there’s a couple of things there, and one of the things is learning how to apologize. And we want to teach our kids to apologize, but I think the biggest way that we teach our children to apologize is by modeling apologies. And an interesting thing about apologies, Kim, whether this is with your kids or anyone, a family member, the single biggest thing about an apology is that an apology is never really accepted or embraced or transformative unless something happens, unless the person that you’re apologizing to, they feel bad because of what you did. So they need to understand that you feel bad about making them feel bad. Does that make sense? So they feel bad. They want to know you feel bad about making them feel bad. That’s whyKim: Give an example. Donna Jones: Okay, so let’s just say you’ve had a conflict, or let’s just say your kids are in a conflict and you say, “Say, I’m sorry.” Sorry. Well, why doesn’t that make people feel better when you just go, “I’m sorry?” Because it’s like you don’t mean it, right?

Kim: It’s not heartfelt.

Donna Jones: It’s not heartfelt. I had a coworker who said that her 80-year-old mother pulled her aside and said, “I just want you to know as I look back over my life, I did some things in your childhood that I really regret, and I want you to know I know that it hurt you, and I’m really sorry. If I could go back and know what I know now, I would do it differently.” And she said that was the single biggest game changer in what had been a 50-year strained relationship. I know I made you feel bad, I want you to know I feel bad about making you feel bad. That’s the underlying core of an apology. And if we miss that, we miss the whole point, honey with a spouse, okay, “My words, I was so harsh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have talked to you that way”. That’s different than, “Well, I’m sorry, but I was stressed or I’m sorry, but I was busy.” It’s just different- Kim: [inaudible 00:26:29]. Donna Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s huge. Kim: And then what if the 3-year-old or 5-year-old or 7-year-old doesn’t seem to express those emotions to the mom and she is just, sorry, sorry, mom. What are you hoping the mom would do?

Donna Jones: Well, again

Kim: [inaudible 00:26:52]. Donna Jones: Yeah. When you’re teaching an apology to your child, you can’t… Again, you can’t make your child, you can’t make any human being have a certain feeling or have a certain attitude. All you can do is model it, right? So mommy yelled at you today, “I shouldn’t have done that. I handled that the wrong way.” Or one of the things I talk about in the book is some of the things that we do wrong, and one of them is displaced anger. And this is why handling our conflicts, resolving our conflicts with the person with whom we’re in a conflict with is so important. Because if we don’t, then that angst that we feel, it will bleed onto other people. So if we’re upset with our teenager and our emotions are right here, and then our husband comes into the kitchen and says something, we’ll bark at him, but we’re not really mad at our husband, we’re upset at our teenager, or we’ve had an argument with our husband and we’re kind of upset about that, but we’re going to work and somebody cuts us off. We’re going to be mad at the stranger, but we’re not really mad at the stranger on the road. We’re mad at the unresolved conflict, right? So what I like to say is that the Bible says, “In your anger, don’t sin.” And that of course, predisposes that we will get angry. And by the way, anger is not a sin. Anger is an emotion. It’s what we do with our emotion that either makes it sinful or sanctified. Now, that’s huge because actually anger, if it serves to help the relationship or the people in the relationship, it’s actually sanctified, because there’s some things we should be angry about. Kim: And I’ve always heard it as a secondary emotion. So what’s underneath it? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? And the core is the anger is covering something else, usually.

Donna Jones: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I feel sad, mad, bad. Yeah. And yeah, sometimes it’s fearful. Sometimes I feel disrespected, I feel dismissed, I feel marginalized. There’s a lot of different feelings that go with the feeling of anger. But there are some things that… See a lot of Christians, they don’t understand that anger is like an indicator to your point. It says something else is going on here, so pay attention to it. So that’s why the Bible says, “In your anger, okay, there’s going to be anger, don’t sin.” Okay, well then the million-dollar question is, okay, well, how do I not do that? Well, don’t the sun go down on your anger. So okay, well, how do I do that? Well, we go back to Jesus’s instructions. If your brother or sister sins against you, go point out their fault. And that just means you just, fault is singular, one specific thing. That was the issue. Not 10 things that you’ve been harboring for the last year, right? And then talk about that. Now, here’s what happens to so many of us, is we know that Bible verse, right? And we think, okay, I know I’m not supposed to let this thing go down to my anger, but if it’s with maybe our husband, we might think things like, yeah, but you know what? This was actually his fault, so he should be the one to apologize to me. This wasn’t even me, it was him, right? If it’s with a friend or maybe a family member, we might think things like, oh, gosh, I don’t even know what I’d say. How would I even broach the topic? That would be such an awkward conversation. So there’s different reasons we don’t address it depending upon which relationship it is. But for whatever reason, we feel hurt, we feel angry, and we let the sun go down on our anger. And so we go to bed, we wake up the next morning and life has to go on, right? We have to go to work, we have to make the kids breakfast, we have to do whatever we do, so we kind of forget about it. But what we don’t realize is that unresolved conflict is like a brick that’s laid down between me and you. So I lay a brick between me and the person I’m in conflict with. Well, one brick is a small thing, right? But because there’s still some underlying feelings we have about that, something else happens. And if we don’t resolve it, then we lay another brick on top of the first brick. And then something else happens, and then something else happens and something else happens. And then what happens is that then there is a wall formed, and then people, when they look at the other person, they don’t even see the other person, Kim. They see the wall of hurt, the wall of misunderstanding, the wall of anger, the wall of bitterness, the wall of resentment, the wall of you fill in the blanks. And that’s when people get to the point when they go, “Well, this relationship is hopeless. I’m done with this friendship. I’m done with this marriage. I can’t wait until this kid graduates and is out of my house. I’m leaving the church. I want to burn the church down.” That’s how we get there. It’s one unresolved conflict at at time. Relationships don’t disintegrate in one explosive moment generally. And so that’s why it’s really important to know how to deal with these everyday issues that we all face because they have huge ramifications. And I did say earlier, you don’t make the small things big, but you don’t make the big things small. And one of the chapters I have in the book is, well, how do you discern which is which, because there’s some discernment and knowing what should I just let go and what do I need to address? But if somebody’s listening and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, that’s me. There’s a wall in my family, my extended family or a wall in one of my relationships, I don’t even know what to do.” Well, walls are torn down the same way they’re built up. So the next time there’s an issue, you make a commitment to resolve it because what you do is like you’re just removing one brick upon another brick, upon another brick. And over time then what happens is you realize that a relationship can be restored if you put into play some of the things that God has told us to do. And the book is filled with all kinds of very practical things, ways that you can manage this and do this so that you can have the best relationships possible. Kim: So great. Donna, I love your years of experience in women’s ministry with your own family, with being married to a pastor, how you have been able to put those truths into a book. And I’m excited for the listener to hopefully purchase it on Amazon or go to your website donnajones.org and read this book because I guarantee there’ll be a principle that you can apply and it’ll make that relationship over here that much better. And at the end of the day, it is people that make our lives in terms of the experiences. And it can be wonderful, but it can be people that are very hurtful also. And when you were talking about it makes me feel frustrated or makes me feel sad, really, I’ve heard also in these conversations around conflict when we say, “Well, it makes me feel this way.” The other person cannot really say, it doesn’t, because that’s your feeling. So if it does make you feel sad or embarrassed or rejected or hurt, there’s power in even stating that. And sometimes that’s even hard and vulnerable to say that I felt this way when this happened, but I’ve heard the healing can come also when that individual can at least recognize that that’s what happened as a result of their actions. And they’re not going to change how you felt. But that kind of what you talked about with the child of feeling really sorry. By you sharing, sometimes it’s a real mystery, husband and wife, he doesn’t know that the woman is feeling a certain way until she actually says it. Can’t read our minds. And it’s not this guessing game, which it can easily be. So the power of stating how someone feels, and I know there’s the counseling center here in Orange County Relationship 180, they have a paper with probably 30 emotions on it that you can point to, to say, I think that face is frustrated or sad, and to even put words with emotions. So if you’re listening and you’re one of the people that feels like there are two emotions in the world, happy and sad, I encourage you to take the next step and learn more. And maybe it is going to meet with your pastor, or maybe it is being vulnerable with a girlfriend, or maybe it’s going to a counselor, a life coach, and having someone really help you as an expert, unpack those emotions. Because a lot of times they are messy and it’s hard to even sort them out and be neatly organized with the emotions. And so it’s easier to just push them away and push them over here in a drawer and not deal with them. But like you’re saying… I mean a relationship, it isn’t built overnight. It is a brick by brick. When you’re building the relationship, that takes a lot of time. And so same thing with the other direction. It can take time to heal, to resolve, to restore, but there’s possible hope. I mean, there’s possibilities and a ton of hope that God can do all things with his power. And I love that story that you shared with the woman whose mom was 80 and the power of that single sentence that changed the trajectory of the remaining days they had together.  Donna Jones: Yeah, it really did. It really did. And Kim, it was so funny when I was writing the book, because as you know, it takes several months to write a book. And so in the six months that it takes to write a book, there were little conflicts here and there that I faced and not monumental, but just the everyday things that everybody deals with. And I would find myself going back to my manuscript and going, okay, wait, wait, wait, what do I need to do in this situation? And what I realized is that nobody plans a conflict. We don’t go, “Okay, on May 14th, I’m going to have a conflict with my coworker. Or on April 12th I’m going to get in an argument with my husband.” Right? So I realized this is the kind of book everybody needs so that when the conflict happens, you already have it on your shelf and you don’t have to wait to get it the next day [inaudible 00:38:29]. Kim: That’s good. [inaudible 00:38:33]. Donna Jones: Well, honestly Kim, it was just because it was practical for me. It was like, oh, my gosh. Kim: Well, and I love your transparency also because sometimes it’s easy to look at the pastor and his wife and think, oh, they just have it all put together and figured out, and I’m sure there’s no conflict in their marriage. So the fact that you are the senior pastor’s wife and you’re writing a book on healthy conflict, I love… It’s a beautiful model and example. So thank you. Donna Jones: Yeah. So well, thank you. And one thing I will say is that if your listeners are listening and they’re like, “Yeah, I do have conflict in whatever relationship.” I want to say to you, number one, you are totally normal. You’re normal. And I think that’s a really important thing for us to say, because many people these days, they grew up in broken homes where they did not see people handling conflict well. And so somebody walked out and left their relationship rather than worked it through. And a lot of people just don’t have good role models for how conflict could even possibly be healthy or actually even make a relationship stronger. I want to say it’s absolutely possible and you can be the chain breaker, but there’s nothing wrong with you. It doesn’t mean you are bad. It doesn’t mean they’re bad. It doesn’t mean that your relationship is necessarily bad, but it does mean that there are ways to handle conflict either in unhealthy ways or healthy ways, and it’s up to us to learn what God says to handle it in healthy ways. Because it can be done, and then it just brings you so much more peace, so much more peace. Kim: Well, and we see on social media everywhere, just people not in control of their anger, their emotions, seeing things, and then the other person canceling them and just putting up the immediate wall. And I would love to caution against that for people as well, because just to cancel someone who’s so dear to you, there’s so much more there, where God could restore and work through. And so before  you are tempted to just cancel, take the next step, as Donna said, to address that brick. And like you said, thinking of this podcast being The Generous Girl, it is an attitude of generosity when we are humble and we’re putting ourselves in the position of that servant and knowing that we would be nothing without Christ in us, and the power, the grace that how much he’s already forgiven us, and just the power that comes when we offer forgiveness to somebody else. So thank you for all of your wisdom that you shared on this episode. And before we close, I want to make sure that we give you a chance to share your favorite Bible verse, a book that you’re reading, and then any recent bargain.

Donna Jones: Okay. Well, these days my favorite Bible verse, since as you mentioned, we’re doing the Bible recap and we’re just finishing Genesis as we record this, is found in Genesis 17:1, and God is speaking to Abraham and he says, “I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless.” And I love that because it tells us who God is. He is God almighty, El Shaddai in the Hebrew. And it’s kind of like, “Because I’m God Almighty, then walk before me and be blameless.” And I think when I keep that in mind that I’m walking before God, like he’s actually… I’m walking in his presence, that he is looking at my life and looking at my responses, and it motivates me to want to be blameless and to do the right thing no matter what anybody else does. So Genesis 17:1, “I’m God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless.” That’s my Bible verse. I am currently reading a book that’s wrecking me, Kim. It is a book by AW Tozer, and I think it’s called Going Higher with God in Prayer and it’s Tozer’s on prayer. And it’s very challenging, and I’m just digging it. I’m loving it. It’s really motivating me and it’s challenging me in a lot of really good ways. I’m a big believer that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be what you’ve always been. And so I need to grow. I always need to keep growing. We always need to keep growing. So that’s been really helpful. And a bargain, okay, so I have a piece of advice. It’s not a specific bargain, it’s a piece of advice. So you and I are both planning our daughter’s weddings, right? And I know you are a huge bargain hunter, as am I, which is why I love you so much, among other reasons. But we’re both huge bargain. And also, I’m a pastor’s wife, so I have to be, right? And I like nice things

Kim: [inaudible 00:43:46]. Donna Jones: Yeah, I can’t pay full price for it. I’ll tell you though, it’s been really interesting. Even with the wedding, we have gotten things discounted simply because we ask, and there’s a Bible verse says, “You do not have because you do not ask.” That’s prayer. But also when it comes to other things, like for instance, our venue, was a certain price to rent the venue, and I just kind of said, “Hey, we’re having a lot of people more than you normally have at your venue. Is there any flexibility in that?” And they came back, “You know what, there sure is.” And I realized, oh, we got that because we asked. So that’s my bargain. Just ask. And hey, they can only say no. Kim: Just ask. Donna Jones: That’s right. Kim: Just ask. Donna Jones: That’s right. [inaudible 00:44:42]. Kim: That’s perfect. That’s perfect. Well, thank you Donna Jones, thanks for being here. And I’m excited for your book tour, your book sales, and it wouldn’t surprise me if your next book might be on prayer. So stay tuned, listener. [inaudible 00:45:01] that following that nicely. So thank you again for your generosity of being here and your ministry and just who you are. God bless. Donna Jones: Thank you so much, Kim, it’s been my pleasure. Speaker 4: Thanks so much for joining us today on The Generous Girl Podcast. We’re so glad that you’re here. And if you know of someone that you think needs to be a guest on this podcast, please reach out to us. New episodes are released every other week, and you can follow us on YouTube and on all platforms. Thanks for being here, and we’ll see you next time