If you enjoy stories, you aren’t going to want to miss this one. You’re going to hear a woman’s story of how she found her identity and purpose through a crisis of faith fueled by trauma and grief. Andrea Brunswick is a Creative Life Strategist with a mission of helping women over 50 find their identity and purpose.

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Transcription - Andrea Finds Her Identity and Purpose

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If you enjoy stories, you aren't going to want to miss this one.

In just a moment, you're going to hear a woman's story of how she found her identity in purpose and life.

So don't go anywhere.

Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire

fathers everywhere, to take great pride in their role,

and a challenge society to understand how important fathers are to the stability

and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero.

Greetings everyone. Thank you so much for joining me.

Andrea Brunswick joins me now and is ready to share her journey of finding her identity in purpose.

Andrea, thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge.

We can miss Jonathan. Thank you.

Well, Andrea, I know there is a lot to your story of finding your identity in purpose, so

we won't waste a minute.

Yeah, there is a lot to unpack with my story.

A full story, really, of trauma.

The trauma from loss, grief, death,

and all of the madness and the insanity that it brings.

But I think I have a lot of trauma also because Jonathan,

for my majority of my life,

and I'm just turned 62, so a lot of life, a lot of living,

I was of the world.

I was of culture and of the world,

and the lanes that I played in were new thought, new age, law of attraction.

Not even understanding really that there was anything wrong with that.

Because when you don't know what you don't know, you just don't know, right?

Like God has always spoken to me since I'm a little girl.

I've been able to hear Him very clearly.

My roots are Judaism, and I've always felt a presence

very close to me. It's sometimes on my body, I could feel something.

Now knowing what I know, I believe that that was the Holy Spirit that was on me, right?

So I always felt that, and I always heard from God.

And for Jewish people, we would never think that we can't hear from our Father as Hashem,

right? Because it was always just us and him.

So in any case, at the beginning of 2021, I heard, I was coming out of my meditation,

which was my morning routine, and I heard him say to me, "Andrea, this is your year to unlearn."

And I was like, "Okay, unlearn." I don't really know what you're talking about, but whatever.

I'm like, "Yeah, take me where you want to take me." Well, he did.

It's so funny because I didn't even know I didn't see it coming.

So it was, you know, when the world went mad from 2020, as I, and I don't mean any offense to anybody,

because I do know people have lost loved ones. I don't mean any disrespect, but

and I'm Canadian. So Canada went mad and we weren't locked down the longest. So I was hearing

this buzz about this social app. I don't know if you know it, Clubhouse. So I gone on there because I

thought, "Geez, that's going to be really good for my business, which my business is. I'm a

creative life strategist for women." You know, meaning, "It's my new term for life coach." I thought,

"Well, this is really interesting, and I think I'm going to really like this." So I went on,

and it was like the beginning when I got on there, and I saw this room, and I thought, "Oh,

it sounds really interesting, because I thought it was going to be a discussion about a book that I

had always loved." But I got in there, and the owner of the room does her little spiel,

introducing what her room is all about, and she says, "I'm a Christian business coach for brilliant

Christian female entrepreneurs." I thought, "Okay, whatever. I'm in the right place because I'm a female

entrepreneur." The whole Christianity thing doesn't mean one thing or another to me. I'm just

going to be here. Well, it was about that first week where I realized, oh my goodness, how intentional

was a Hashem. My father, I felt like I did when I went to kindergarten, and my mom walked me to

school that day, and then she got me to introduce me to my teacher. That's how I felt like my father

brought me here, and he's placed me, and I knew I needed to stay. I didn't know why. I had no clue.

Make a long story short. Not set me on a path because I was so in awe of these women who,

and only for this sole purpose, the room basically was filled with black Christian women.

And from my whole journey now, I see how the black church is often very different from the

non-black church. And I was like, I was blown away because they did, first of all, the owner of the room

always used a scripture to create an activation, and the majority of them were from the Old Testament.

I thought, well, this is very interesting. This is really weird because why do these women know

the Old Testament better than I had ever heard of Rabbi say it? Or, you know, I grew up in a primarily

Jewish area. So growing up, the majority of my world was other Jews. So that set me on a course

still, and with them fine. I started to do my research, and I went on to see what I call YouTube

University, which I love because we can't get educated. I mean, the internet isn't as bad as they

want us to believe, and social media isn't as bad as they want us to believe. There is a lot of good,

and it brought me a lot of good. So what it did for me was it broke things down like I started to

do some searching of messianic Jews, and their stories were like, my story. We're Jewish,

in a Jewish household, you don't bring up Jesus. Yeah, he was born a Jew, he was a prophet, but that was

where it ended. Okay? So I thought, well, this is very interesting. And then I'm still in this room,

and I became now really integral part of the room, and then I found this show that chose him,

because it was always something, really basically, I think my whole life, like probably by the time I

was like double digits, I was still being sent to Hebrew school on Sundays, but there was something about

not so much about being Jewish because I loved being Jewish, and I loved the traditions, and I

loved the holidays, and I loved the food, but there was something about it that did it sit right

with me. Well, along came the chosen, and the episodes with the Pharisees, and the Sadducees,

and it was like, oh yeah, that's it. This is exactly what I never felt. I always just felt like

stop saying that I can't, as an example, you know, Jewish people aren't allowed to eat pork because

it's an unclean food, it's not kosher. And if you do that, you're not going to get to heaven,

and not been sick right with me as a kid, or there was other things, and I thought, this is it,

it's that condemnation, it's that this law sets you up for disaster and destruction. So

a way I went, I just kept following where the Lord was taking me, and towards the end of 2021,

I think it was September, maybe in August, September of 2021, my very close friend who I'd been

friends with since college, just backing up a bit. I brought her to this room on Clubhouse, and my

friend had, was raised from a Catholic, and I used to refer to her as my very, about, devote Catholic

friend, and I introduced her to this room on Clubhouse when the Lord said, bring your friend here,

bring her in this room, and I did that. And she was like, where is my little Jewish friend bringing me

into this Christian room, like with all these really Christian women. So in any case, she was like,

she said, I think you're Messianic, and she would choke around, she'd go rabbi Eddie,

one, as I said, August or September of 2021, she said, "Andre, do you want to give your life to Christ?"

And everything made sense. And I said, yes, I do. So the one thing I think about having been in

the lanes of new age and new thought, law of attraction, doing Buddhism, doing, you know,

Hindu chants, it was about the supernatural, the supernatural about the Lord was what I only knew

for him to be, the supernatural power who could, you know, part the dead see, who could kill Goliath with,

you know, with David, right? Because it wasn't David. It was the supernatural power of a Hashem.

You know, I'm telling you, the Lord works in the most mysterious ways. So I have a friend who

were kind of, they were related through, through an uncle of hers who married a cousin of my mons

and we grew up in the same area, like we grew up in one area where we were both born and then our

parents moved to another area where we stayed and we grew up. So I've known this woman my whole life.

And just before the pandemic, she was talking to me about Christ and things. Now her mother had converted

to Judaism. But Christ has always been this interest for her. So we're on this path together and we're

talking about it. I actually had her do this in her spare, but it was because of her and a connection

that she made at her church, at her gym. And she just started talking about the Lord. This woman

talked about a church that she belongs to because both of us had wanted to get baptized, right? So we

started going to this church together. And I mean, how awesome is that? That somebody that you've grown

up literally with your whole life, we got baptized in the same day together. We had an experience,

Jonathan. What an it's funny because leading up to the baptism, I don't know, my, was like,

my stomach was giving me issues and, you know, it started to have like things and like headaches and,

you know, that enemy did not want me getting water baptized, but I just said get out of my way.

And he was doing the same thing to my friend. But oh, wow. And it's been remarkable. Like, the, the thing is,

is that the day of the baptism was all my daughters 27th birthday. And there's been some issues

between myself and my children in the last couple of years. So I thought, wow, how significant is this

that I am water baptized on my daughters 27th birthday? This has been something that I have been

desiring. I'm over the moon, Jonathan, over the moon. So when all of this was taking place, I was

sensing and hearing that the purpose that the father wants me, obviously, I'm still a mindset coach.

And I work with him, but now I no longer use modalities of the world in my, my coaching practice.

Now it's about biblical principles. Now what's about really leading women to understand that there

is an enemy because a lot of us, I didn't even know about it. I mean, I had no clue. I was who,

Disney in my brain. And because I would plan the different spiritual realms, I can't even believe

that I, but see in Judaism, they don't talk about how really and in Judaism, they don't really talk

about the enemy, right? So I lived my whole life, not knowing, but man, oh, man, oh, man, when I found out

that there's a centimede, that knowledge is power and Hosea 46 spoke so loudly to me. And I needed to be

able to just very humbly accept my, my own ignorance because it was my ignorance that was causing my life

to perish. But you see what I said when you don't know what you don't know, you just don't know.

But once you know, there's an obligation to do better. I sense as I was saying that the Lord is using

me as a bridge. He's using me as a bridge for others who are very much of the world, for other women

who, where their lives are blowing up, where relationships are being really super destructive and they just

can't seem to understand why this destruction is happening in their personal and in their

professional life. And in all of those intimate relationships, whether it be with their spouse,

whether it be with their children, their siblings, their parents. So he really wants that. And I do

think also Jonathan, I don't know how I, well, I don't need to know how because he's going to take me

and he's going to place me. But also for my own people and leading them to really what the truth is

because I think he's really had enough of us and our disobedience, just saying.

You referred to God as Hashem. Yes. The Old Testament Hebrew name for God. So I wanted to

just kind of clarify that, bring that out for those that are like, who's this Hashem that she's

talking about. So thank you. Thank you. Yes. So let's talk about how Hashem became your heavenly father.

Well, see, here's the thing, Hashem again, because when the Jewish roots are always really,

because we only know about the father Hashem. But where it's different now, I used to say,

before I gave my life to Christ and before really accepting Christ and everything making sense to

me about Christ, I was one of those that would say, you know, it's God in my own definition and

understanding. It's my own personal relationship. And that very much was true in reference to

my Jewish roots because I didn't believe that I had to do all of this stuff in order to be accepted

or in order to get into heaven. Okay, that being said, that was I think on a more shallow surface,

superficial kind of level. But now, Johnathan, now that my heavenly father, so grateful, so grateful

to Yeshua Christ, Jesus, that He went to the cross, that He had rescued me, that my father loved

me so much, because now we know when I trace back, I have a really good memory, Johnathan, like I can

remember back the time, like when I was two. And maybe I could remember things even before that. But

as I said earlier, I've just always known that there was this presence around me. So my father and

Jesus and the Holy Spirit were always always with me. Now, of course, there were times in my grief and

my depression and my anxiety. I didn't necessarily always feel that, but see now, because I didn't know

my the word. I didn't know the Bible. I didn't know it. I didn't care to know it, but now

now we can't get it off. Now, He quenches my thirst and He feeds me and He filled me with the Holy

Spirit, like I'm never alone. He's giving me the Holy Ghost and He's filled me with the dynamist

resurrection power and He's placed this authority that I have inside of me. And what He did for me,

I can't begin to tell you the way He freed me. And I'm sure I truly believe, and I truly hope for

every believer that they feel this freedom, that those chains and those shackles have been taken

off of us. And this authority, because that is a game changer for me, knowing that I have the mind

of Christ. And if I identify with that, and if I stay in that and not let my flesh lead me,

because new age and new thought, personal development, psychology, sociology, it's all about your

flesh. And that's the destruction. You refer to someone named Yeshua. I want to clarify who that is,

because people may, well, that sounds a little bit like Jesus is that the same person?

And so, yeah, I wanted to clarify that. It's the Hebrew, the Hebrew name for Jesus.

Yes. So talk about that moment when, or moments when you finally understood it and when you realize

that Yeshua is God and the link between this promised Messiah that would come that was mentioned in

the Old Testament and the Tanakh scriptures, even Torah. Yeah. And the link between that and the New

Testament, where when did you figure that out and how did you figure out that Yeshua is the Messiah?

How much? It started at that beginning walk for me on YouTube University when I was listening to

these Messianics. Not just I was listening to Messianic rabbis and I was listening to other Messianic

Jews sharing their story. And because, as I said earlier, because I had stayed so much in, you know,

Buddhism and New Age and love, it's all based on supernatural. So in my head, as I, you know,

like concluding my findings, because it was like I was doing research, right? It was like, well, yes.

That of course, this makes sense that the Father, with where we were in humanity at the time,

and where His chosen people were. I mean, He chose us for a reason and a purpose.

Then He wanted to set us apart from the other cultures that were in the world and the other nations.

It was like, but of course, He needed. We needed that. We needed to stop listening. Listen, I love

rabbis. Please don't get me wrong when I say this. My niece is a canter. I love the synagogue. I love

the Jewish teachings, but there's something, when you place everything in the authority of man,

there's something very wrong with that. And I think that that's what was taking place. At that time,

He needed to come here on earth in a fleshly form. What's the scripture? I'm going to, I don't want

to ruin it, but, you know, the word was the word and then the word became flesh. And He needed His

word to become flesh so that we could, in a tangible way, because, you know, humans, we need to see

something before we believe it. We can't, you know, walk on faith. We walk on sight, right? And He needed

to show that. And honestly, Jonathan, I feel if I would have been born in that time in history,

because it was called the way back then, I would have been a follower of Yeshua, ha Messiach, Christ, Jesus.

I would have been walking. I don't know if he would have chosen me to be one of his disciples,

maybe not. And that would have been okay. But he would have sat at my table. And I would have just

like Mary and Martha and he would have been coming to my house and he had made so much sense to me.

Now, I'm not the very best at explaining it to others yet. And I think what I need to do is to let

that go and just to allow the Holy Ghost to just to move through me and the explanation when I am

explaining it, say, to a fellow Jew who really is like, yeah, no, there's not such thing as the

Trinity. No, of course, there's a thing as the Trinity. And it's all in the New Testament. I mean,

in the Old Testament and in the Tanakh, it's talked about the Spirit of the Lord. It's talked

about us, we, however it is that they reference it. There's actually a couple in in the Psalms written

by the prophet David. He references Ha Messiach and speaks of Yeshua. And the other one is Isaiah 53.

Isaiah 53 is pretty specific. And then when you read the accounts in John and some of the other

gospels like Matthew and Matthew, Mark and Luke, they validate, they cross validate Isaiah 53. And then

you have another link in the first half of the first chapter of John speaks about the beginning

of Genesis. Exactly. That was mind blowing. David knew about him. Abraham knew about him. Job knew

about him. Isaiah knew about him. And yet now in this time, there are those that are still looking

for someone else. Isn't it funny? Isn't it funny that they'll accept Buddhist principles.

They'll accept all of these other principles as real. Okay? Yeah.

Muhammad, Israel, as this, as real. But for some reason, I don't know if it's the magnitude of Christ.

If I would have brought up Jesus as because I was so ignorant, I remember many years ago,

and it must have before even had children. So it's going to be maybe let's say 35 plus years ago.

There was in a strip plaza not far from my lived, juice for Jesus. I was like, juice for Jesus.

I was one of those ignorant ones. What led you into the path of spiritualism and new age thought?

And what was the moment where the Holy Spirit delivered you out of that and revealed the truth?

I was raised, lived in the world, my family, really basically, or of artists.

Okay. We were born Jews. So very secular. And I was born in the sixties, raised in the seventies,

and walked it up in the eighties. And somewhere in the eighties, I went into selling life insurance,

which introduced me. He's passed on now, but a man named Bob Proctor, who, if anybody had seen that

movie, the secret, he was one of the lead people of that movie. So he has a fellow Trontonian, like myself.

But insurance companies used to use him his termless acceleration coach for their sales teams to work on

the whole limiting thoughts and beliefs and just back up a bit. So when I was a little kid, I always

wanted to be like, happy. I wanted to join the Peace Corps. See where that's going. All right. That's

all of the world. Yeah. But I guess in Christianity, it would have meant I wanted to be a missionary.

Secular. It's the Peace Corps. So I'm hearing these concepts and they just made so much sense to me.

Like, but of course your thoughts are going to lead to the results. But of course my emotions and my

thoughts are going to be connected to what results. And I just kept diving deeper. And

because the super natural, like at one point I was even going to start looking into the Khabala,

the mysticism of Judaism. I guess I didn't because I think it's very demonic, but that's for a whole other

topic a whole other day. But you see, trauma started in my life. When I was 22, I lost my dad. He was

sick for four years. That trauma and that grief was having me because I've always been curious.

I've always been a seeker. I believe I kept was wanting to I was wanting to find God in a way

outside of how he was taught to me through the temple, through the rabbis, through Hebrew school.

I wanted him. I was wanting I felt like I needed him to hold me in that desperation and in that

pain through grief. And because I had other traumas and loss, I kept diving more and more into these

other principles, thinking that that was going to lead me to the final destination of God.

I believe that that's why in the beginning of 2021, coming out of my meditation and hearing a

shem say, this is your year, Andrea, to unlearn. I used to think I was this really bad manifestor,

because I'd had things on my vision board and it wasn't happening. So I thought there had to be

something wrong with me. Oh my God, my vibration must be off or I'm not aligning properly to my desires.

No, the father let me go so far and then he was like, yeah, it's okay. You've gone far enough

and now it's time. And I instantly, as I said, I started to do a little bit of my research just

needing to understand. So my friend was very helpful. She said, and you really have to understand your

Jewish roots. I'm like, please, like, like enough already. But when I started to hear the same story

from my people regarding what it was like in their home, if they talked about Jesus, that made sense.

And because I used to, I would used to call it my energy centers when I go into meditation,

because I'd set an intention like, love, I knew God was love. I want to vibrate it at that frequency.

And those ways centers would be like, it would be like electrical currents on fire in my body.

So I knew something. So now when I found out I didn't quite get the Holy Ghost situation, that

took me a bit of time. Like, who's this Holy Ghost? Like, oh, I'm only this person.

Like, well, I'm not, but I just allowed myself to be. I really just, I was so willing with zero resistance

and just allowed it because I made a promise. When I heard those words that this is your year-to-end

learn, I promised God, I will unlearn whatever it is you want me to unlearn. And as much time and as

much focus as I ever gave to those other principles that you're wanting to remove from me, I will

10 exit, 20 exit for the amount whatever it is that you're wanting me to learn. And that truly is

what I've been doing. Hence, I'm here today on a Christian radio channel talking about Christ.

Would you offer a prayer for dads or sons or daughters who are listening now who are on their own

journey or their own struggle trying to find their identity in purpose? Heavenly Father, Holy Spirit,

Lord Jesus, we come together today, Jonathan and myself as I'm here as you've blessed me

to be able to share my testimony of you and the freedom in which I now walk in and the liberty

and the freedom that I feel surging through my blood, surging through my brain. I ask for this same

freedom, the same blessings that you've blessed upon me for anybody that's listening to this,

to feel that, to know you, to have a coming to Jesus moment. Get them the way you got me in your loving,

loving way because Father, you are so good and you are so loving. You allowed your son

to die in the most brutal, horrific way, Christ, which you did for us, which you've done for this world,

and you've placed the Holy Spirit in us. This is what I ask for you to bless the fathers

so that they can walk because men have a hard Father. You know that. And mothers and the women

and children in today, in Christ Jesus, mighty holy, majestic name, amen. Amen. Thank you so much

for that prayer, Andrea. Thank you so much for being on the Fatherhood Challenge. It's been a pleasure

having you. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Fatherhood Challenge.

If you would like to contact us, listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in this program

or find out more information about the Fatherhood Challenge. Please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

That's TheFotherhoodChallenge.com

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