FamilyLife Today®

Andrea Griffith: Shame grows in the dark, but if you can get it into the light, just getting that truth into the light, the power of that secret is broken. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I did not realize the weight I had been under for so long. Nothing was solved then, but as I left, I just felt this weight lifted off of me.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I’m Ann Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Today we’re going to do something that’s really interesting, different, and fun.

Dave Wilson: Wait a minute, I don’t know what’s happening.

Ann Wilson: You are very involved in this, Dave.

Dave Wilson: Are we going to introduce our guest?

Ann Wilson: Not yet. Because we are going to give you a reading comprehension test.

Dave Wilson: No, you’re not.

Ann Wilson: Yes, we are. And it’s going to be a little different because I’m going to have you read something and you need to remember it because then you’re going to be tested on it. But as you’re reading it, we’re going to put some headphones on you that’s going to be loud, noisy, and very distracting. We’re going to see how well you do with your comprehension.

Dave Wilson: I couldn’t comprehend it without headphones on. Are you serious? So that’s why these headphones are sitting on the table?

Ann Wilson: Honey, this is just a little picture of what it’s like to be a mom.

Dave Wilson: I know. I’ve watched you. It’s crazy. So I’m putting these headphones on?

Ann Wilson: Yes.

Dave Wilson: Do I put them on now? What do I read?

Ann Wilson: Put the sound up to the microphone so our listeners can hear what you’re listening to.

Dave Wilson: That is horrible. This is a mom’s day? That is so loud. Okay, so read out loud what I’m being tested on?

How AI works. AI isn’t a brain, it’s a prediction engine. It processes data by turning words into numerical vectors using a neural network. It applies a mechanism called self-attention to weigh the context of an entire sentence simultaneously. Rather than retrieving facts, it uses probabilistic interference to guess the next statistical token in a sequence. It’s essentially a high-speed game of math-based fill-in-the-blank.

Ann Wilson: Okay, now you can take off your headphones.

Dave Wilson: That was loud and chaotic.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to the life of a woman or anyone staying home with children. Okay, are you ready for your comprehension test? Did that sound like our kids, grandkids, family room every time we go over there?

Here’s your quiz. Question number one: The passage describes the AI’s internal representation of words using which specific mathematical format?

Dave Wilson: Fill in the blank? That was the last thing I read, was fill in the blank.

Ann Wilson: The answer was numerical vectors. Here’s question number two. Did you guys hear that? Did you even hear it yourself?

Dave Wilson: I was yelling? Was I loud?

Ann Wilson: You were loud. What specific mechanism allows the AI to evaluate the significance of every word in a sentence at the same time?

Dave Wilson: What? I have no idea. I have no idea what I read. There was a word in there, vectors. I remember the last words, fill in the blanks. That’s all I remember. Did I read it even right?

Ann Wilson: The answer is self-attention. So we’ve got a guest sitting over here. What’s this got to do with Andrea? This has a lot to do with our friend Andrea Griffith here.

Dave Wilson: Next time we do something like this, you’re going to do it. You girls could probably do it.

Ann Wilson: No, I would not. Andrea, can you explain why we had Dave do that? Do you know?

Andrea Griffith: Maybe a little. There is a Bible study that I’ve written called *Center*. How do we center our lives on Christ when everything is swirling around us? There are loud voices in our head, whether it’s our kids, whether it’s our boss, whether it’s our own voice that’s so loud, or all the distractions in life. And yet, our hearts want to be centered on Jesus, but how? How do you do it?

Dave Wilson: Andrea, you’ve got to tell our listeners who you are. Some of them know you. You and Trench have been on before. You’ve been speaking for FamilyLife Weekend to Remember for almost 20 years this year.

Ann Wilson: Let’s talk about—you’ve got three studies. Which one do you think we should start with? Is this the one, *Center*?

Andrea Griffith: *Center*’s fine. It’s kind of the first book out of the three, but you can—they are standalone studies at the same time.

Ann Wilson: Explain why you’ve done them, why you’ve written these Bible studies.

Andrea Griffith: I really did want to give moms something simple that they could grab. It’s not overwhelming. I love the studies that are 45 minutes to an hour of homework, but if you’ve ever done a Beth Moore study, you’re digging in.

I love those, I love the Beth Moore studies, but you can’t do it at a sitting. And at the same time, if you’re a mom with little kids running around, what can I grab? What can I ingest? What can I get into my head, my heart, my life just to pick it up and sit down with Jesus? My hope is that as you open those books and you get into the scripture, that God will just meet you there in those scriptures, but I won’t keep you there all morning long.

Ann Wilson: Before we get into this, can you give us a little bit of your journey? You’ve been on before and you’ve shared a little bit of your journey, but I think it’s pretty remarkable what God’s done in your life. Will you take us back a little bit?

Andrea Griffith: Sure. I actually grew up in church, but I did not understand the Bible. I did not understand the gospel. I don’t know where I was. I know that the scripture says that the Holy Spirit has to help you, the Holy Spirit has to remove the blinders from your eyes, and maybe that just took a lot of years for me until He just encountered my life.

I grew up in church, I was there all the time, but I did not live like somebody in church. I was a total hypocrite. I looked one way in church, I was up front, I was even leading worship and different things, but I was somebody else through the week and on the weekends.

Dave Wilson: Was it a secret? Did anybody know or was it hidden?

Andrea Griffith: Very much a secret, at least I tried. I tell people I was a very good liar. I don’t mean that I was convincing, I just mean that I was trying to cover all the wrong things I was doing.

When you’re young and you’re lying, the consequences are maybe a little bit smaller, but as I grew up and became a teenager and continued to lie and continued to make wrong choices—immorality, drinking, just all kinds of things that I didn’t want anybody to know about—the consequences got big fast.

I remember my senior year of high school, I found out I was pregnant. Because I had this one persona that I thought everyone was seeing, but the reality was something different, I just still chose to cover. I still chose to hide. Like you think of Adam and Eve at the beginning, they did something wrong, and what did they do? They just ran and hid and covered, and that’s exactly the route that I was choosing.

Ann Wilson: When you found out you were pregnant, were you 17 or 18?

Andrea Griffith: I was 17.

Ann Wilson: Tell me, when you discovered that, what did that feel like?

Andrea Griffith: Just a lot of shame. Also a lot of pride.

Ann Wilson: What do you mean?

Andrea Griffith: Pride in that I didn’t want anyone to be able to know that part of my life. Pride of still hiding, still covering.

Ann Wilson: Were you in a panic?

Andrea Griffith: Very much so. My parents didn’t know the choices I was making. Some of my friends did, but outside of that small circle, no one really knew. So just how do I hide, how do I cover this? The age-old question that I think we still do today. I know I do.

I decided that I would have an abortion, and I did that. For me, that was the beginning of a very long, uphill, downward spiral. I just continued to heap shame.

Ann Wilson: Did anyone know? Did your parents know?

Andrea Griffith: Just the guy that I was seeing. So another thing that you’re hiding, but internally you’re starting to—it’s affecting you.

That made everything get really real fast. More shame. I couldn’t believe what I had done, and I really didn’t have any answers. It’s been done. What do you do now?

God in His grace and in His mercy, He put me around a group of people that were really believers. They looked like it on the outside, but they lived it in their hearts. They would have a desire for something that God calls us to and they would try hard to live that out. I would have a desire, but I just wasn’t trying at all to live that way.

Ann Wilson: Where did you meet them?

Andrea Griffith: I started traveling in this ministry called Life Action Ministries. I was accepted—I graduated from college with a music degree—I was accepted to be a singer on their team and started traveling around. The differences between them and me just became apparent really quickly.

One morning, I had my time in the Word every day. I was up reading my Bible and I felt like the Lord said, "Andrea, if you don’t get honest about your past, we are not going anywhere." I knew that Jesus was my only hope.

I went and I found a pastor’s wife and I just told her my whole story. It was the first time that I brought my reality into the light. I’d kept it in the dark for so long, and I feel like that’s where secrets grow and shame grows in the dark. But if you can get it into the light, it’s like just getting that truth into the light, the power of that secret is broken.

Ann Wilson: What did it feel like for you? Do you remember after you told her everything?

Andrea Griffith: I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I did not realize the weight I had been under for so long. So just being able to share that with someone else, have someone else’s eyes and heart on that, nothing was solved then, but as I left, I just felt this weight lifted off of me.

A few days later was when I actually came to know the Lord. I met with her and her husband and he just started asking me all these questions. I’d always been able to be such a good liar, I always lied my way out. This man was nailing me to the wall with questions.

I started to see my heart the way a holy God had seen it the whole time. It was so wicked and so dark and so ugly, and I didn’t know what to do because I thought I already knew Jesus. But I was seeing my heart in a way I’d never seen it before.

I just started with the top of my head and I went to my feet and I just gave God every part of me. I just said, "God, I’ve made such a mess of my life. Would you take control? Would you lead me?" That was my point of salvation. Looking back from that, that’s when my life started to change.

Ann Wilson: And as a listener, if you hear this, as you said that Andrea, I was thinking, for both Dave and I, that’s when our lives changed too, when we gave Him everything. If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, I don’t know if I’ve ever done that, I don’t know if I’ve ever just given Him all of me because it’s very vulnerable. It feels scary, and yet it’s exactly what we were meant to do.

Andrea Griffith: We were made for Him.

Dave Wilson: Living in a lie or covering, which is what everybody does every day and we even do it as believers still, that is no way to live. It’s darkness. It will come out in the light.

How did you reconcile the abortion as you came to Christ? I’m guessing there’s listeners going, "Oh, do you guys think abortion’s okay?" No, we don’t. But how did you—I even picture as you’re giving Him your whole body, you came to your womb and you had to give Him that. How did you process?

Andrea Griffith: That took me some time. That didn’t happen immediately right there in that moment. You’re right, God is a God of light. It’s Satan that came in and brought in death and darkness and all the lying and all the covering that we do still today. I still do that today.

How do I bring myself to this God of light when I’ve created death by my own choice? For me, I had to find a women’s care center, like a pregnancy care center, and many of them have programs that you can go through as a post-abortive woman. That’s what I did.

I just went and I said, "This is in my past and I know I have not healed from it. I know there’s still scars, I know there’s still shame. I think about it every day."

Ann Wilson: Did you?

Andrea Griffith: Especially on the anniversary, the yearly anniversary that would come around.

Ann Wilson: That makes me cry, of just the millions of women that carry that still.

Andrea Griffith: The voices are loud in your head. The voices are loud, and especially when it was your own choice, your own mistake, your own failure, and that big of one that you can never undo it. You can never get that life back.

For me, I knew I needed help, so I just went and said, "This is in my past. I hear that you guys help women with these things. I’d love for you to help me."

They actually had a book, a little study that we went through, and they matched me up with another woman who had had an abortion in her past. We just met, and that went deep. It was so cleansing. I remember just crying. It took me to the Word, I would have to write things out, and it was like my heart being ripped out and it was still raw and kind of being scrubbed with that raw, tender heart.

Yet God used it. He just got me to the Word and eventually His Word got bigger than my own thoughts and feelings. I kept telling myself this, but God’s Word kept saying this. Eventually this pile kept growing and growing and I had to make a choice: what am I going to believe? Am I going to keep believing what I think and feel or am I going to believe what God’s Word says? Just making that choice and then choosing every day. You hear that self-talk telling you this, but then know, what does God say to me? What does God say as His child? And then choosing to believe that.

Dave Wilson: Man, as we celebrate 50 years of ministry, we continue to hear stories of how God is transforming families through FamilyLife.

Ann Wilson: Like Andrew and Eileen, for example. When they married, they were so full of hope.

Dave Wilson: Weren’t we all?

Ann Wilson: But life storms came fast—a newborn, family tension, and strains on their marriage, and their home just felt heavy. But God wasn’t finished. Through FamilyLife’s Weekend to Remember and Love Like You Mean It cruise, they rediscovered Christ’s design for marriage, and they were even—listen to this—able to help Andrew’s parents reconcile after years of distance.

Dave Wilson: Which is really what it’s all about, God changes our marriage so we can impact others. Here’s the thing, thousands of couples are facing storms like this right now, and some are quietly hurting. Some are on the brink of divorce and some need hope today.

This ministry is supported financially from partners like you who say, "I believe in this and I want to give." Right now every monthly donation will be matched for a full year, doubling the impact of your gift.

Ann Wilson: So we really hope and pray that you’ll consider joining us. All you have to do is visit FamilyLifeToday.com or call 1-800-FL-Today. Together we can shape the next generation of families who walk with Christ.

*Center: Wrapping Your Life Around the One Who Matters Most*. Take us through this one a little bit. What do you want people to know in this study particularly, *Center*?

Andrea Griffith: I could so identify with your test, Dave, with hearing a million voices. Even you, I think, were listening to kids, we could kind of hear it. But I mean even just the voice inside my own head, the one I was just talking about, the condemning voice or the voice telling me all the things that I’ve got to do today. My to-do list is a mile high.

Sometimes I will literally have my Bible open and my mind is a million miles away.

Ann Wilson: Or you’re praying and you’ve prayed the same thing a million times.

Andrea Griffith: Yes. So how do I get myself centered on the Lord? How do I put myself in a place that I can hear from Him? One of the things that I like to do is when I find myself doing that, which is often, whether I’m praying or I’m in the Word, I just literally have to tell myself, "Andrea, this is the most important thing you will do all day. This is the most important voice you’ll hear all day. So let’s pull ourselves here, let’s align ourselves here."

The way for me to do that has been just getting into the Word, which is why I tried to write just very simple studies, but that will get you right into the Word right away and let you pull it apart and hear what God wants to say to you today.

Dave Wilson: How did you do that? Both of you? Dads live a different life. Not that we’re not around our kids, and some are stay-at-home dads and they’re there, but there seems to be we often get separation from them with a job or something outside the home. But you’re not only around your four kids, they’re loud because they’re kids, and you’re trying to be centered. How does a mom do that? That’s what the study’s about. How do you center?

Andrea Griffith: I’ll tell you a story. I remember when we had our first daughter, she was our hardest kid for whatever reason. She just—she didn’t want to sleep, she cried a lot. I remember being up with her at 3:00 in the morning, you’re up, you’re nursing your baby, you’ve got all these things going on trying to keep this baby alive. You don’t know what you’re doing, it’s your first kid.

Then I tried to get up and have time with Jesus. I’m exhausted, I can’t even read the words on the page. Later in the day, I’m folding clothes and I’m complaining to God. I am mad. I’m like, "God, You gave me this child. I’m happy that I’m a mom, but I really need to get with You because I’m just mad, I’m tired, I’m not doing well."

I remember the Lord just speaking so loudly to my spirit and just saying, "Andrea, you don’t just have to be with Me for 30 minutes to an hour in the morning. You’re folding clothes right now. Could you invite Me in?"

I was like, "Yeah, I can." So as I’m folding this shirt, I just start to pray. "God, would You protect my husband? Would You protect his heart? Would You be the one that goes behind him? Your Word says that surely goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives."

As I’m folding this shirt and I’m thinking about his back, "God, would You cover him as he’s going with Your goodness and mercy?" I pick up another thing, I start to fold it. I’m picking up socks. "God, would You go with him as he’s walking through the day," as I’m folding his socks.

That was just revolutionary to me, is that I had had God in this small little box that I could only spend time with Him first thing in the morning or last thing at night before I was going to bed. Now I had this really hard kid that I didn’t know what to do with, and God just said, "Andrea, I’m with you all the time." So in the chaos, in the moment, how do we pull Him in to create Him still as the center?

Ann Wilson: Andrea, I had that exact same revelation. It was crazy to me, and I think it’s because when you’re single or you’re married without children, you can find these chunks of time, and so that’s what you’re used to—my big chunk of time with Jesus.

I did the exact same thing. I felt like I need to be talking with God all day long because our oldest was hard too. I was desperate. I was like, I have no idea what I’m doing.

I began to pray all day long. I would put Bibles all over the house, and then because even then it’s like, "Oh, I can get a verse in at the table or in a carpool line or whatever." Then back in the day, this is cassette tapes, people. I put that in the car and it was the Bible. Now we have apps on our phones that we can listen to the Bible.

I can remember listening to the Bible all the time in the car and these kids' praise songs, you know, these little Cedarmont kids and all these crazy, but I thought, wherever I am, God is with me. I’m going to worship and I’m going to hear the Word and I’m going to sing and I’m going to pray out loud. Even in the car, I have to—when our kids were little I had to pray out loud because it was so distracting. If I prayed out loud, I could keep my thoughts together. It’s this beautiful journey of God saying, "I know right where you are, and I’m with you in all of it. I’m right here."

Andrea Griffith: He’s so gracious. He meets us right where we are.

Dave Wilson: Can I just say how much I love Andrea Griffith?

Ann Wilson: It was awesome. She was awesome. We’re going to have her back again tomorrow. But let me tell you, don’t ever do that to me again—put headphones on and kids screaming in my ears. You didn’t even tell me this was going to happen. I get it, okay? Moms, that’s a chaotic life. You’re never allowed to do that to me.

You lived it. I got to live it for a couple of minutes. Anyway, Andrea will be back tomorrow. You can pick up her Bible study *Center*, *Chosen*, and *Called* at FamilyLifeToday.com. Click on the link in the show notes and you can get centered in the chaos of your life. How’s that? We’ll see you back tomorrow.

FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.