This episode is dedicated to my Father, Juan Lara, who joined our Heavenly Father on June 16th, 2024 and on Father’s Day. While his departure brought much sadness, God brought joy to help offset some of the pain of losing him. My father is a very special man in my life and I always considered myself to be “one blessed girl” to have a father like him. This will be a 2 part series on discussing the importance the role that fathers have in our lives and how they influence our relationship with God. I title this episode “A Father’s Gift” Joining me is my dear friend and sister in Christ, Jackie Morales.
Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your well-being, spirit, soul, and body. Join me your host, Dr. Alara, a naturopathic, doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ana Lara. And this episode I want to dedicate to my father, Juan Lara, who on Father’s Day of this year, June 16th, 2024, he went on to join our Heavenly Father. Now, I know a lot of people might think how sad, how tragic he died on this day, but I have a story to share with you, a story that brought me so much peace and so much joy in the last six months of his life, how God was moving through him and in our lives.
This episode I want to dedicate to him, but also to our Heavenly Father and to all the fathers in the world. This episode is titled A Father’s Gift, and it’s going to involve discussing the importance of our fathers in our lives. So we are going to be doing this in a two-part series, and I want to introduce a guest. I have a guest that’s going to be joining me in this conversation. She is a very special friend of mine and she is a sister in Christ. Let me share a little bit of her bio. For the last 18 years, she has been gracing Arizona radio listeners with her soft, credible, yet energetic personality, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. She goes on to share on why she feels blessed to be on the value radio. So some of you may recognize her, may recognize her voice. She says it’s the vibe and the energy of my radio family connecting to the community. And of course our listeners. Her loyalty to the community is extremely important to her. She volunteers at local elementary schools, the National Kidney Foundation, Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, Arizona Hygiene for Hope, and many more. With the calendar jam-packed, she still finds time to hike, read, dance, travel, and spend quality time with her family and close friends. Please help me welcome my dear friend Jackie Morales.
Thank you so much. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here. I know we’ve been friends for a very long time, but to be in a that you have been talking about for years, really time. Yeah. Because this is something that you envisioned and I’m like, we’re here. So thank you so much.
Oh, I’m honored to have you here. And just so our audience knows, we’ve been planning this
Yes,
For the last four weeks. We had the schedule to record four weeks ago, and what I’m going to share, is if I had said this or thought of this 15 years ago, I would never believed it, but the spiritual warfare in our lives, the moment we decided to sit down and talk about this conversation, this topic has been on both ends.
Yeah. Very heavy.
Heavy.
And it’s incredible. I mean, just the minute that we had the conversation, it was just like boom.
We were attacked and we did not prepare. We did not prepare. We went in with our rose-colored glasses, right?
Yes. Yes we did.
As you guys can hear, my voice is raspy and it has been like this for the last four weeks, on and off, on and off.
So I finally said, Jackie, we got to get this done because this message, I just know it’s going to impact someone out there. I don’t care if it’s just one person,
Absolutely.
But it’s meant to bring healing this message. And so we ask the Holy Spirit, we ask our Lord Jesus Christ to join us in this conversation right now and make his presence known and for him to share whatever message comes through us. We really didn’t plan this out.
No, we didn’t.
We’re just going to go with the flow, with Holy Spirit flow. And so while the attacks have been big, I know that once we record this, the enemy will back off. So I’m very grateful for us to be here. So when I first thought of this topic for this episode, my dad had just passed away, and I was in this state where I was in awe. Obviously I was hurting, but I just had this immense, immense, indescribable peace. It was not something I could explain to people how I felt, this peace, this calmness and stillness. And I knew in the moment that that peace and stillness was coming from God. Amen. No way I could have reached into my pocket,
No.
Into my mind and come up with it.
Absolutely not.
So I was so excited. I wanted to share how important the role of a father is. One of the things that we’ve always talked is we’ve always said how lucky, how blessed we are to have fathers like the fathers that you and I had. And so I remember maybe a week or two after he passed, I reached out to you to let you know my dad passed and you called me right away. I know. Picked up the phone and you called me,
You texted me. And I was like, wait, what? And it was immediate. It was immediate because one of the things that I believe brought us really close together was our dad’s fathers because we had already known each other, but we had a conversation in the parking lot at an elementary school and we had shared how my dad was suffering with kidney failure and you had a tie in with that as well. And then we just started getting closer and sharing stories of our dads. And they were very similar in a lot of ways. Very similar. Oftentimes you would talk about your dad, and I felt like, that’s my dad. That’s my dad.
So I definitely felt that bond from that moment immediately.
And so as I was talking to you on the phone, that’s when Holy Spirit put in my heart, have Jackie join me in this conversation. I was going to do it by myself, but then I’m like, yeah, you’re the perfect person to have this conversation. You have such incredible insight and so let’s dive in.
Yeah, let’s do it.
Why don’t you share a little bit about who your father was, and what did he mean to you? What was it that he taught you that was still so powerful to this day? To this day that I’m able to pass on to my children as well? Because your father passed away how many years ago?
This year will be six years. Six years. That’s what I thought. But if anyone that’s watching right now who has lost a parent know that it feels just like yesterday, right? No matter how many years passed. But my dad was, the best way I can describe it is he was the heart of our family
With my mom is the backbone of our family. And the one thing that he really passed down to me and my siblings was his childlike heart because he was always a child at heart. He never took anything really seriously. Even if we went through trials or tribulations, he was always joking. He was always laughing. He would always make light of the situation. And it made life so much easier because when you see your parents aren’t stressing out and they’re really going through life with ease, even though we’re going through a really hard time, it just really stuck out. And in the Bible it says that the child to be childlike heart and you’ll be welcomed into the gates of heaven. And that was just, my dad was a perfect example of what that was. He loved to watch cartoons, girl, even when he was older, he would buy all the Looney Tunes videos that he could. He was always watching that and just joking and laughing. So I know that my childlike heart is a reflection of my dad’s, and that’s what’s held us all of Australia and the wittiness and the joking. My children are witty and they joke. And I believe a lot of that comes from my dad.
That’s his legacy.
Yes, absolutely.
I talk about legacy, the legacy of a
Father,
Because oftentimes we think it’s money, it’s material things, and it’s not. It’s the character of who the person is, their values, their morals,
Those
Things that get passed on to you, that you carry it forward to the next generation, so forth.
That’s
The true legacy hearing. You talk about your dad, once again, it’s like me talking about my dad. It’s interesting because we live in a world where we don’t have many good dads. The family structure has been under attack, and I never wanted to talk so much about my dad to certain people. I didn’t want it to sound like I was bragging, but when you have a good father, it’s hard to not acknowledge it. I remember being eight or nine years old and looking at my, I was helping him in the garden. He always gardens. He had a green thumb. He loved to plant everything, trees and different fruit, special, all these different plants. And he always liked for his garden to look nice, his yard. And I remember helping him one time in the garden, and I remember just stopping and looking at him the way he was talking and interacting with me. I remember clearly that moment realizing, acknowledging in my mind, I have such a good dad.
Wow. I said, I wasn’t going to cry, girl.
I know, but I feel that. I feel that it’s beautiful,
Beautiful,
And I remember telling myself at that young age, I would never allow anyone, any man to disrespect me because my father always respected me. We’re going to cry today. Look at that. He respected me. He honored me. He never raised his voice.
That’s hard.
We’re moms. We are. It’s hard to not raise your voice at your children when they’re not listening. And you start out with the first time being calm. The second time you’re calm, and then the third and fourth time you lose it. Right? I know. And that was never my dad. He had this calm and stillness in him, this peace. And so he never hit us. He never called us out a name. And I get it that not many people can say that about their father. So this is not a bragging situation. It’s the opposite. It’s to show what good comes out of a child when the father has the heart of his heavenly Father,
The impact of generations to come.
Generations.
Yeah.
I have never allowed a man or a woman to disrespect me.
I know this to be true,
Right Girl. I say I’m holy with the hand of hood. Pray with me. Don’t play with me. Exactly. I do have that piece of his character of who he was. But I have my mother’s personality too. And I agree with you. My mom was the backbone of our family, but my dad was the heart.
And together, whenever people ask me about my parents, I always say that their marriage was a reflection of God’s love because I always say the enemy is always after marriages because that’s where change happens. That’s where changing generations happen. And when you have a man in the home who can lead because men are called to lead with that heart, and then to have the wife, the mother be the backbone, then the perfect way I could describe it is how we grew up. And it was growing up in a house full of love, which I think changes everything when you go out into this world. And yes, we were very blessed to experience that, but also to share our stories, to give hope because God is so good and he’s going to lead men. Even if there’s a man watching now, there’s change. You can change. God is in the miracle business.
I like that. It’s never too late to change. If you’re 20, 30, 40, even 50 years old,
You’re living, the sun came up, and you’re breathing. It’s a day that you can make a change.
Amen.
Because if you have a daughter, this is who a daughter can be, someone who’s confident and strong, who knows who she is, who knows that she is loved and deserves to be respected and be treated with kindness. We need that. We need that. And so the offset of having a father who’s not like that, I see the repercussions through generations when a father is absent or the father is abusive, verbally, physically, they’re addicted to drugs, alcohol, or they’re very machista or they’re cheating on the wife, mistreating the mom. Maybe they don’t mistreat the children, but they’re mistreating mom.
And the children see, and daughters and sons see that.
Yeah, they do.
And it’s very interesting. I still don’t understand the psychology of how people make different choices. So for example, I know people, I’m sure people too, where they had siblings, they grew up in the same home and the father was abusive, was not a good father to them at all. And one of the members of the family decides I’m never going to be in a relationship with someone like my dad. And they completely avoid that.
They become the avoidant.
They become the avoidant of that situation. But then there are people in that same family that become that, whether it’s the son or the daughter. The daughter may end up in an abusive relationship, just someone just like the dad, because that’s in her mind. She perceives that that’s what’s acceptable, that it’s okay. And then sometimes the sons become like the dad and some sons. So whether you’re a male or female, depending on how mom and dad are, we observe those behaviors. But it comes down to choice. But what influences that choice?
And that’s such a great question and I’m glad that you went there. I was just thinking that’s a choice. It’s a choice. I believe that some are going to have that epiphany and that moment where they’re going to wake up and say, I don’t want this for my family. I want children. I want a family. And I don’t want my children to grow up in what I grew up in. And in the other aspect, I believe that it’s a sense of comfort. It’s a sense of, well, they think that that’s the way it is. Until they step outside of that and realize that that’s not normal. That’s the comfort. That’s what’s familiar to them. That’s familiar. That’s the norm, the trauma. And I know that I’ve experienced trauma bonds I’ve experienced, and it’s very hard to get out of that. And so some people don’t make it out of that. And that’s where turning to God comes into play. Because that’s the only way, that’s the way that helped me to get out of certain situations that I needed to get out of. And I just turned to God.
Hearing you say all this and just also analyzing it. Because the same thing happens with people who have good parents. They might see the good example, the good role model of the father and a mother, and what relationships are like. And then they still end up in toxic relationships. I have.
So it does come down to choice, but what influences choice has to be the information that’s coming into our minds and how we’re digesting that information, how we’re making sense of that information and applying it. How do we internalize it? How do we respond to that?
It’s a supernatural strength, I believe, because you have to want it for one, you have to be willing to go through what you need to go through to get to the other side of just living a beautiful free life. And I just speak from my own experiences. I wanted that, but it was so hard. And that’s why I’m like, you know what, God, it’s being you. I know that you’re going to get me through it. And he did. He’s so faithful. But you’re absolutely right. Even growing up in a house full of love with great parents, you still get caught up in this world because you’re not of this world. We’re in it. And we have to use our discernment and our wisdom. And sometimes we do get caught up in toxic relationships – in situations that are not healthy for us.
My mom was the kind of person who would say, still would say, but I didn’t raise my kids to be that way or to that, I gave a good example. And I kind of constantly have to reiterate, yeah, you did provide us a good example, but it’s not your fault. You raised us. And then as adults or even young adults, as teenagers, we are making choices. And so if you are being a good example, you’re giving good advice and that person is refusing it because it’s going to go here. We think we know more than our parents. And if you are that person,
You have a rebellious spirit. And that spirit of rebellion is going to get you in trouble because you think that you know more than your mother and your father.
Granted, there may be some situations where the child does know more, unfortunately, and very extreme cases of I know people who grew up, mom was an addict, she was in the streets, the child did know more. This child was more of an adult than the parents were. And so she had a fend for herself, raise herself, and grow up. And I truly believe that that is God’s hand over that child to protect them and separate them. They are the generational curse breakers. Like, I’m not going to do what Mom and Dad are doing, so I get it. But for those of us who have decent parents, no parent is perfect.
No,
None of us are perfect. Our dads were not perfect. No. Now we say that my dad was not perfect, but he was good.
Yeah, so good.
He was good. He had this immense patience that I still don’t understand even in. So he ended up being sick from the end of January. Actually, I was with you when I got the call.
Yeah. We were having lunch with another dear friend of ours. And immediately when you got that call, man, I felt that, because I remember getting calls like that too. And it’s like your mind just goes blank and you’re just like, I just need to get to him right now. I just need to get to him and to my family.
I Felt like the world.
Oh girl. Yes. And the minute you stood up to leave, we just prayed and we prayed.
I felt the world was trembling.
Yeah.
And I was blessed to have that, from January till June to have that time. I remember driving to the hospital and asking, God, not yet, God, not yet.
Hold onto him.
And when I got there, he was just very, very ill. So I dunno if you notice that, but I was like, whoa, something’s here. Praise God.
Praise God.
So I remember seeing my father in the condition he was in, and I thought, oh man. And I remember laying hands on him for an hour praying for him. I didn’t care what doctor or nurse came in, or what family member was there. I was praying for him. Not yet. Don’t take him yet.
And that’s crazy because when my dad got sick the first time, the doctors gave him a 1% chance to live.
Oh, wow.
Of course, we weren’t prepared. We knew my dad was sick, but not to that capacity. He would get sick going to the hospital, and come back home. But that time was different. And we felt it walking out of the house. And I remember how cold it was. It was in December, and my sister walking to the car to go to the hospital. And we both stopped and we looked at each other and we said, this feels different. And next thing you know, we’re at the hospital. He’s been in a Dun coma for three months. We were already saying our goodbyes. And my sister did just that. And she prayed and she said, just leave him here with us. I’ll take care of him. And she was on her knees praying. And the doctors would look at us like we were crazy because our family was just so full of prayer and so full of faith. And that 1% turned into him. It was a miracle he was back. He was not in a vegetative state. He remembered everything. The doctors, there was so many doctors and nurses who didn’t believe in God who believed in God because of my dad.
Wow.
And so when you say that, I’m like, God answers.
And I truly believe that God will extend a person’s life just for that, because that’s what I saw with my dad.
Even if it’s for a moment,
Even if it’s for a moment. So from that point on, he was in and out of hospitals. This man was driving himself to dialysis, doing yard work, washing his truck, fixing cars on his cars, doing stuff. I caught a picture of him once he was on top of his roof. I’m like, what are you doing up there? He was like 78 years old. Kidding. What are you doing up there? But he was very physically capable and mentally capable. But you’re right, that moment in January, it felt different. And I remember I want to share this with the audience. I remember this is why it’s so important to tune into the voice of God.
Amen.
He was still in the hospital that first round. It was early February, and I was leaving the gym in the morning, and I wasn’t thinking about my dad, the situation, or any of that. He was stable at this point. So we were just waiting to take him home, transfer him home.
Oh, I remember that too. I do.
And so I was immediately in my vehicle. I heard the voice of God, me, your father’s going to be okay, but the day that I come for him will be a day of joy because he will be with me and my kingdom. He is mine. And that did such a transformation in me. It brought so much peace and realization like, oh yeah, my dad does not belong to me. He is not mine. He belongs to God that is his son. And when he’s, God is telling me the day I come for him, you should be joyful because he’s going to be with me.
Amen.
In my kingdom, what more reassurance. And I am psychologically of sound mind. I’m not hallucinating. I’m not making this stuff up clearly. Just you speaking to me is how I heard his voice. And so it gave me a sense of peace, and it brought me down this path of exploring joy. How am I going to find joy in my dad dying? How do I materialize that here? And it’d be genuine how? But it did something that bypassed my own understanding. And it immediately downloaded this. It’s a different concept. I felt it. I mean, I read it. I’ve read this before. It’s, it wasn’t new, but this is something I was feeling. It was like downloaded into every cell of my body, into the DNA of me of understanding that deep. And so months went on. And this is where I mean, if you don’t believe in God, I feel sorry for you. That’s where I’m at with people. It brought this level of boldness and courage to me about speaking to people about how real Jesus is.
Amen.
How real God is. My father never owned a Bible. He never read a Bible. He came from a very poor town in Mexico. He knew how to read. He loved to read, but they didn’t have a church there. He didn’t like the Catholic church. He had a lot of things against it. He saw through all the manipulation.
He just wasn’t that religious person.
But he always had a relationship with God. And in those last six months of his life, he really demonstrated to me, that he started to talk to me about his prayer life. And I could see him now looking back on moments where I thought maybe he just had his head down, but he was praying.
Wow.
He never called for attention.
He just did it so humbly. And so the last week of his life, we didn’t know he was going to pass because he was so mentally present, but his body was just shutting down. But we were kind of preparing. If that did happen, it was a Friday. Me and my family were leaving. And I had told, before we left my dad, I told him, Hey dad, me and the girls were talking about this, and I just want to tell you when the day comes that you die, not that it’s going to be anytime soon.
I didn’t want to make him think he was dying. Don’t freak out. He’s like, do you know something? I don’t. Yeah. Like, oh mom. But maybe I did in the spirit that my mind didn’t fully want to grasp. Wow. But I remember telling him, me and the girls were talking about this the other night, and we wanted to tell you that when the day comes you die and you’re in heaven. If you can just show us a little glimpse of what heaven is like, if God allows you to, if you could show us. And he nodded. He said, yeah, I’ll do that. That was a Friday, Wednesday he had a procedure and we were in his room and he woke up from the anesthesia, and my daughter’s there, my oldest sister’s there, and he’s so happy to see us, Jackie, he looks at us like a little kid. He’s like, you’re not going to believe where I went.
I said, where’d you go, dad? He said, I was in God’s glory.
Wow.
He said, everything was made of gold and silver and precious stones. And there were so many people everywhere, and they all had such peace, and I had peace. I had the same peace they had, and I felt good. And he said, this man was walking next to me, showing me leading the way, showing me this place. He says, but I couldn’t see his face. And he gets his little hands and he covers his face and cries. He’s like, I couldn’t see his face because it was the face of our Lord. And he goes on to say, I saw people there that were once homeless on the streets and they were restored, and they also had the same piece.
Wow.
So one thing you should know about my dad and my mom always got upset. My dad was so avid at helping the homeless.
Really
Even it was giving $2, $5 something. It was not uncommon that I would drive down the street where he lived, and I would look and I thought, is that my dad sitting with those homeless people? Wow. Be freaking think he’s homeless. And I would just laugh because he would be sitting there at the Circle K or the 7-11 just hanging out with the other men talking.
Wow.
And later on, he would disclose to me, he said, yeah, but not only did I give them money or buy them food, he said, I talked to them about God and about turning their life around. I gave them good advice. I’m like, he’s over-evangelizing.
And this is a man who didn’t own a Bible.
He didn’t own a Bible. And I lost it here. I mean, I was happy to hear him say all of this. He says, then this man, the Lord was showing him. He walks him to this place and there’s this very long table with lots of food. He said, and the plates were made of gold and silver. Everything was made of gold and silver. And at that point, I said, Dad, do you know that everything you’re sharing with me, it’s in the Bible? That’s how it describes how heaven is. You’re describing our Lord’s table, the feast you’re describing, that all these things are made of gold and silver and precious stones. I said, God showed you your eternal home,
And he answered your prayer.
And he answered my prayer. How good is that? How good is God that He says, hold on. Not only am I going to give you your wish, your desires, your heart’s desires to see a glimpse of heaven. I’m going to let your dad see it before he leaves and share it with you here in the physical. Something happened in that moment when he was sharing his experience with us. Jackie, I wish everyone can really have that experience. I know that God transferred something to me through my Father.
Absolutely
This immense joy and peace, this reassurance. I almost felt a little bad after like, God, forgive me if I didn’t fully believe in you, because now I really believe in you. I fully believe in you. I wanted to go down the street and scream at the top of my lungs. God is real. Jesus is real. How could this man know that detail if he never read the Bible? Because God will have so much grace and mercy over it that he will show it to the person who needs to see it and know it.
Amen.
So that brings me to something that has always been something very deep in my heart, and it’s this being in genuine relationships, not just here, but I want to have a real genuine relationship with God. God knows our deficiencies. He knows what our hearts desire. He knows what we need.
Absolutely.
And I want to continue this conversation, and we’re going to hold off on here. It’s getting so good.
It’s going to get good, but we’re going to wrap here because we’re going to carry forward to episode two. Okay. So I want to let my audience know you don’t want to miss what’s next in this next episode. I hope you’re enjoying the conversation so far. But in the second episode, we’re really going to dive in and talk about the importance of a father’s role and what does a good father look like, maybe through the lens of two daughters here. That’s just our opinion. But I hope you join us in the next episode of this Conversation of Physician Heal Myself podcast. Until next time, guys, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, and reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.