Narrative Threads in the Loom of Life( #156-Amy Vogel)

All right, how's it going everyone? This is Jimbo Paris. Welcome back again to the show. Today we have Amy Vogel. She is an author, speaker, podcaster. She is married to a man named David for about 20 years, proud mother of about three daughters, and she actively shares her faith journey, her shenanigans, everything, with people around the world. And she's here to share this journey with us, too, today. So, yeah, let's bring her up. How are you doing, amy? I'm great.

Thank you so much for having me this morning.

Yeah, you know the privilege really is. You know it really is a privilege to have you here. And just to kind of start this off, can you tell me a bit about yourself, who you are, what you're about and kind of what your message is?

Answer to that question is really easy. Actually, you know I'm about hope, healing and vision. My mission in life is, through story, to help people realize that better is possible, and not just better individually, but better for collective humanity, that everybody can thrive. And so I do that through writing my own books, through speaking to different groups on podcasts, and I also do that through helping other people tell their stories in whatever medium and format that they feel led to do that. So I've just been really convinced that story is what sticks with us and story is what gets in there, and story is what makes the change. It's interesting.

So a bit more about you. Do you have a dog? By any chance, I do.

I have a little dog, little Doxton mix named Pepper Nice.

So how is kind of Pepper maybe enriched your daily life or maybe kind of brought you know, some joy to your daily routine?

I don't know if you know anything about docks and breeds, but they have a whole lot of attitude. They have their own mission in life and that mission is to do whatever they want, whatever they want, and so it's been a really delightfully challenging time to incorporate her into our lives and, you know, meet her needs, which are constant and just fun to watch. I've posted a few things on my social media about her, and one of my favorites was typically the post I do about my pets. Get a lot of views, but you know the most recent one was near Halloween, when I was making her do tricks for candy corn, and so she actually didn't wait for the trick, she actually bit my finger on camera because she's just like enough, I want the candy corn. Give it to me now. So there's a lot of good content out there on Pepper. She's pretty entertaining.

Why did you get pepper, and were there any kind of quirks or nuances that sort of made you Want her and maybe made her stand out a bit more amongst other dogs?

Actually, pepper came to us. She was a rescue from a friend of mine whose husband didn't want another dog, and so my friend knew that my girls and I were interested in getting another pet and my husband was not. But this is about nine years ago and so we actually ended up getting her after Thanksgiving, after the family had gone back and forth about whether or not to keep her, and, sure enough, she was supposed to be our dog. So the family joke is that we gave her to my then husband for his birthday and just said here you go, he's a birthday present and he was not excited, but she's been around and she's definitely enriched our lives.

And we talked a lot about the dog, but you know the whole family now. You know how do you spend quality time together as a family and how is that kind of a part of maybe your faith journey or maybe some of the family shenanigans that you do have, you know on social media right.

Well, nothing will educate you faster on your Faith beliefs then talking to a child about them, because they don't have filters, they don't have the knowledge in the background, so they ask whatever is on the top of their head. And I remember something that stayed with me my middle daughter, who's now 17 when she was little I think she was six or seven she Would ask a ton of questions all all my girls have, but she in particular is known for asking the really out there kind of questions. And and her question was well, I want to see God, I want to see him with my eyes, and so we had to, you know, walk through how to pray for that. You know it's something as adults we just take for granted, that you know Jesus lives in our heart. Well, no, she needed the visual, and so her little child mind wrestled with that for a long time.

And then my youngest she and I say so I'm 121 every night. She's almost 11 now, but ever since she was really able to talk, I was teaching her Psalm 121, I thought. I thought my oldest Psalm 23, and you know. So we incorporate that, the faith, and we talk about it when they have questions we're not afraid to have discussions about faith because ultimately it continues to help form mine and my beliefs and my values. So if you want strengthen your faith, have a conversation with a little kid.

How strong do you think your faith is, and was it always as strong as you may think it is right now? You know.

I don't think the faith is a hard one to define. I think an internal knowing that there is God, a higher power, has always been with me. I don't remember a time from when I was Little bitty in church, where I didn't have some kind of feeling of God's presence with me. That's always been with me. There had been, of course, in times of crisis where either my faith Feels more present, feels more tangible, or feels less tangible.

I tend to feel the less tangible presence not because God has gone anywhere, but because I just haven't been paying attention. So that usually happens, the everyday run-of-the-mill kind of situations. I think it's easy to have the awareness and knowledge of God when things are really really good or things are really really bad. It's that ordinary time that's always been challenging for me, mostly because my ego and my daily life gets in the way. So I don't tend to define it as a strength, right, although I do believe that there's some element of being aware that I was given a gift of faith from a very young age and having that knowing of the presence of God, of the presence of the divine in me, in my life and around me, has been with me for a long, long time. I know that that's a gift and I'm grateful for it.

And let's kind of get a bit more into your career now as an author. How did you begin to incorporate that gift of yours maybe into your authorship, your speaking and your podcasting, because I know that you have this expertise and non-fiction, fantasy, those things, religion Did that gift kind of carry over into those areas too?

Oh, absolutely Absolutely. I've been involved in church. My parents had me, our family, involved in church since I was little, and so it was a natural progression that well, all the way through high school I was very involved in church in high school, but in college and my early adulthood I got away from it, as a lot of people do. And it wasn't until I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, who's now 20, that I really felt like I need her to be in a space church where she can connect with God, that she can learn about God, and so I started going back to church and bringing her with me when she was little, and it was a interesting because I didn't go to church for anything but to have my daughter raised in the faith that I was raised in. And then my subsequent daughters too just kind of stumbled into this career along the way. So I got involved in church. You know, people noticed that I have good speaking skills, that I have a lot of knowledge of scripture, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy writing. So gradually I just kind of stumbled into these opportunities to teach Sunday school, to write devotionals, to write Bible studies, and I discovered through that process that this was something that was part of me. I didn't know it was there before, but as I got more into it, it was something I realized, again stumbling. I always joke that if I'm going to write an autobiography, it can be called Holy Stumbler, because I just tend to stumble into these opportunities At least that's what it feels like to me and all along the way, over the last 20, 25 years, I've had opportunities and I've taken the risk and I've gone forward with it.

And 10 years ago, I got involved in leadership with the church, started a prayer ministry, used those different writing and speaking gifts. I was preaching, I was teaching, I was creating courses, creating Bible studies all of those things. And on the side, a project that I was really passionate about was an devotional about a relationship with the Holy Spirit, and so in 2016, I started writing a book, the devotional on curating a relationship with the Holy Spirit, which is? It started because I read a book by Francis Chan called Forgotten God, and so I was really passionate about experiencing the Holy Spirit very charismatic phase in my life and I'm much more contemplative in my prayer life. So I started writing a book, I started going through every scripture that tied back to the Holy Spirit, and I got the opportunity to present it to a publisher and they published it in 2018.

I continued in pastoral ministry up until last year where, for my own mental health, especially after the pandemic and all the pressure, I needed to step away, and so I left my pastoral ministry and, at the same time, the church I was involved in was shut down, and so I took some time to just heal. And a lot of that came from reading, and so I rediscovered my love of reading, fiction specifically. And then, in January of this year, I decided you know what, I'm going to try and make a go with this. I'm going to try and use these gifts in a different way, serving outside of the church system, but still aiming to help people heal, to help people, you know, find a vision of a life, the kind of abundance that Jesus talks about. And, you know, my faith has shifted and grown and expanded since then, and it's really really good, it's really really fulfilling, and so I aim to serve people with my job, with, you know, keeping the readers, the listeners, my partners in mind when I interact with them.

So it's a different expression, but I'm having a really good time with it, and you do so much, and you know I'm just thinking here, you know, how would you describe your ideal life? You know, because what I'm thinking in my head is you seem to be already living your ideal. How would you describe it, though, in words, to people?

well, I am absolutely, you know, everything perfect in my life now.

Never will be that I don't think anyone has a perfect right, but I have a really, really good life and I feel like the things that I've been through over the last Year to are that healing is taking root and that going into next year, it's going to be even better, and so what I envision, what that means for me, is more of what I'm already doing, so being able to help people get their message out, being able to write another book, being able to offer resources that help people, whether it's Nonfiction or fiction, help people get this vision that god loves them, the divine loves them and wants the best for them, and so to be able to do that, to speak to larger groups, you know it's, I guess, in a word, scalability to take the life I'm already living and scale that, but Not necessarily always for financial gain.

I'm very conscious that I need to keep Serving and serving, using my gifts in different communities, and then when you do that, the money comes with it. So I think, when your heart is in the right position, when your heart is open and your intentional, you know the divine is going to provide, god's going to provide for you so, when it comes to your business, what are you focused on right now?

Because you're an author, speaker, podcaster don't know whether or not you're still a ministry consultant, but, like, what is your focus right now with your business and what is kind of the Message or the goal of that?

you know there's three parts of this is right. There's me and my published work, there's me and my speaking and then there's Story coaching, which is helping people. So the two I'm really focused on right now. I've kind of got the speaking on hold, so to speak, other than conversations like with you. You know these are easy and I love doing them, definitely give me life. But I think you know publishing because I'm an independent publisher. That's part of the business to so publishing. I've got a book coming out in january. So getting that ready for publishing, continuing to Bring awareness to the book I published this year, which is a devotional book coming out in january, is fiction my fiction debut and then finding people to partner with. So it's that first and that third goal, the speaking is.

I have a sense that the speaking opportunities will come, so I don't have to Focus on those so much. The investment of my time right now is, you know, publishing getting my books ready to publish and then building up the pipeline of partners to whether they published through me or they publish wherever or Release whatever medium they're going to use. I don't have an active podcast right now. I'm doing monthly instagram lives of people I just want to talk to. So that's kind of my version of a podcast right now. I did love the podcast that I did. It was through the church and I love being a guest. It's just so fun to have conversations with people.

That's interesting, okay, okay. So what else I'm thinking about here is kind of actually, let's talk about your books first. How was it like publishing your first book?

So my first book was traditionally published through a publisher, so it was a completely different experience. I had no idea, absolutely no idea, what the process was. To work with a publisher who was kind, who was helpful. I learned a ton. I also learned that as the author I think a lot of people don't understand. They think if you're going to traditionally publish, the publisher is going to do all the work for you as far as marketing Not at all. You're partnering with them to get your book out there and then you, as the author, take it and market it essentially, and so I love the group that published my first book. They did a great job with the cover, they did a great job with everything and, like I said, I learned that was like getting my feet wet in the publishing industry. The second book that was published in April of this year, I self-published through Amazon, through their KDP platform, and so that was another learning curve. So I had the experience of you know in the publishing world and then to take it and learn how to do that on my own and take a book from Inception to you know, clicking, publish on and putting it out there and having people buy it and having people market it. You know it was. It was a great experience. Again, I learned so much.

I don't think it's possible to ever learn everything. You know you're never going to be a complete quote unquote expert. There's always more to learn, and so this experience with this book absolutely set me up for continuing to do this and continue to help other people do this. That's the core piece of who I am is helping other people bring other people. You know, if I'm going to have success, I'm going to have other people be successful too, so it's great to have both of those experiences. It gives me some insight into maybe what other people don't know about that. You know the different sides of it. There's benefits to both. There's pros and cons to both. Right.

Yeah, you mentioned helping other people be successful. So when it comes to helping others, you know, do you feel a sense of fulfillment and do you have any big success stories?

You know this whole story coaching thing is an interesting moniker because it gives me a lot of freedom in who I can work with. So one of my very first clients if you will, one of my very first partners was an organization called Noah's House. I live here in Houston and they're a nonprofit and they provide housing people with intellectual disabilities and I had been in contact with the executive director and.

Mayesh. She contacted me and she said you know, I need help rewriting some grants and our grant proposal work, and I loved doing that. I never thought I would enjoy grant writing, but I really did because it was helping this organization that does such valuable work and it was going to help set them up to be more successful in their pitches to foundations and charitable organizations. That was a really great. In fact, I need to check in with her to see what happened with one of their grants that I wrote the actual grant for. And then I've made connections with a lot of people where the success will come next year and in 2025. So I have three partners right now that I'm working with. Two of them are influencers on Instagram and helping them put together some just based on their content whether it's a book or a workbook or something that printed material that they can offer to their their community. So that's going to be a lot of fun.

And then I'm also working with a post-traumatic growth coach and we are crafting a post-traumatic journal for veterans who are diagnosed with PTSD. We are working with someone that I know who's a veteran and helping him to dig deeper to overcome. This is a diagnosis, is something he's going to have to live with, to more growth, more healing, and we hope to be able to offer that, not only to help her get her PhD I don't really say I'm like I'm writing your thesis for you but also to make this something that is valuable to the veteran community, to the people and not just veterans suffer from PTSD, but you know huge percentage of those come back from their deployments with issues that they really need help overcoming. So we hope to contribute a resource that will help them do that.

And you also have three daughters. Can you kind of talk a bit about them and kind of, maybe, how they influence you? Do you think they look up to you and they aspire to be just like you in some way?

No, they have their own dreams and I'm glad for that because you know, gentle parenting has become this, like this thing you're supposed to do. But I'm Gen X and we didn't know gentle parenting until we became aware of gentle parenting with the rest of the world. But what I've always wanted in my relationship with my girls is you know, people often talk about how they missed the stage when they're little. Or they miss the baby stage, or you know different stages. They miss them. Yes, that's true, because you know there's no other feeling in the world like holding a newborn baby or like snuggling with your toddler. But I've always had this idea in my mind that I wanted the kind of relationship with my children, with my girls. That would be something at the end of my life when they say I'm so glad she was my mom.

I'm so glad Just gratitude right and I'm so glad they're my daughters and I'm so glad they have their own dreams. And if I can help them again go back, if I can help them achieve those, you know I'll do whatever I need to do. In fact, my oldest is sophomore in college and she asked me if she could interview me for her psychology class project, and so we finished that up yesterday, and so it's just that. Those are the little things right that you know. I want them to become their own people and help the people they were created to become and the people they were created to help. And so I don't want to anticipate they're. They're going to have my same journey. I want them to have their own journey and I want to be part of it. I love the women they're becoming. My daughters are twenty seventeen and almost eleven and I just love seeing the people that they're becoming. It's, they're awesome, they're amazing humans.

This has been an excellent interview and I definitely learned about you, and hopefully you enjoyed this too. And yes you know I'm thinking here too. Do you have any final words or advice that you could give to the audience that will be watching this?

Yeah, absolutely Always that. You know, the most powerful force in the universe is love, and love often communicates itself through story, and so you may not think I never thought I had a story to tell or a very compelling story to tell, but you do. You really do. Everybody has a story in them that wants to be expressed specifically so you can help somebody else. So don't discount yourself, and if I can help, you find me on Instagram. That's where I do. Most of my posting is on Instagram.

That's great, all right. Well, thank you for being on the show, amy. It really has been a privilege. Thank you, and I would also like to thank the audience here for watching us. Yeah, I'll see you next time. All right, bye.