Collide didn’t begin with a business plan or a vision for a women’s ministry—it began with one woman hiding in a closet, confronting her own pain, and allowing Jesus to meet her there.

Episode Summary

How did Collide get started?

In this special solo episode, founder and director Willow Weston takes us back to the very beginning of Collide—a story that didn’t start with a conference, a nonprofit, or even an idea for a ministry. It started in a closet.

Years ago, Willow was home with her baby when someone connected to deep wounds from her past showed up at her door. Overcome by fear, anger, and unresolved pain, Willow hid upstairs with her baby. In that moment, she realized that although she had experienced tremendous healing since giving her life to Jesus, there were still wounded places in her story that needed attention. She sensed God inviting her to come out of hiding and pursue deeper healing. The next week, she made an appointment with a Christian counselor.

It was in that counseling office that the idea behind Collide was born. Willow began describing how wounded people move through life colliding with other wounded people—and how easily our unhealed pain can wound those around us. But when she looked at Jesus in Scripture, she saw a different kind of collision. When Jesus collided with wounded people, they were left more whole than broken.

Soon after, one college student asked Willow to mentor her. A couple of friends turned into more than 20 young women packed into Willow’s living room studying the people Jesus encountered in Scripture and asking what happened when their broken stories collided with Him. What started as the Wounded Collision Bible Study eventually became an experiment simply called Collide.

In this episode, Willow shares the unexpected story of how those living-room gatherings grew into events for women of all ages, how wise leaders encouraged her to allow Collide to become bigger than any one church, and how the ministry eventually took a huge leap of faith to become a nonprofit—even without money, staff, an office, or a clear roadmap for what came next.

Willow also shares some of the women whose stories shaped Collide along the way, including a grieving mother who had walked away from church after losing her son to suicide. At a Collide event, she discovered she didn’t have to pretend she was okay—and that God could handle the depth of her pain. Her story became part of the fuel behind Collide’s commitment to creating spaces where women can show up authentically and encounter Jesus in the places that hurt.

From conferences and counseling support to mentoring, Bible studies, classes, leadership development, and this very podcast, everything that followed grew from that same invitation: bring Jesus the real story, including the broken parts, and see what He can do with it.

Collide began with one woman discovering that God could meet her in her brokenness—and then use that very brokenness to bring beauty into someone else’s life. And as Willow shares, this is only the beginning of the story.

Meet Willow Weston

Willow Weston is the founder and director of Collide and host of The Collide Podcast. Her passion for Collide was born out of her own experience of encountering Jesus in places of pain and discovering that healing doesn’t require us to hide our brokenness.

In this solo episode, Willow pulls back the curtain on Collide’s beginnings, sharing the unexpected moments, people, risks, and invitations from God that transformed a small Bible study in her living room into a growing movement of women daring to believe that God not only meets us in our brokenness—He can use us there.

Key Takeaways

• Healing can begin when we stop hiding. Collide’s story began when Willow recognized that unresolved wounds were still affecting her life and chose to get help.
• Your brokenness doesn’t disqualify you. God didn’t wait until Willow had everything healed and figured out before He began using her story.
• Jesus can handle the real story. Pain, shame, grief, addiction, disappointment, and questions don’t have to be hidden before we come to Him.
• Healing changes how we collide with others. Unhealed wounds can spill into our relationships, but encountering Jesus can change what we bring into our interactions with others.
• Pay attention to what God is already doing. Much of Collide’s growth wasn’t carefully planned. Willow and the early team kept noticing where God was moving and taking the next step.
• You don’t have to have everything you need before you say yes. Collide became a nonprofit without staff, an office, event supplies, or financial security. Its growth required continual leaps of faith.
• Getting help matters. As more women shared their stories, Collide developed counseling support to help remove obstacles that kept women from receiving professional care.
• God can use ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Collide’s leadership model grew around giving women opportunities to learn Scripture, discover their gifts, and serve even while carrying insecurities and weaknesses.

How This Episode Will Encourage You

Maybe you’ve looked at Collide from the outside and wondered how it all began. This episode gives you the answer—but it’s also about much more than the history of a ministry.

It’s about what can happen when one person stops hiding.

Willow didn’t come out of that closet with a five-year plan. She came out knowing she needed help. She went to counseling. She began looking at Jesus differently. She shared what she was learning with a few young women. Then she kept paying attention to what God was doing and saying yes to the next invitation.

If you’re in your own version of the closet right now—hurting, hiding, afraid, or convinced your brokenness means God couldn’t possibly use you—Collide’s story offers another possibility.

God can meet you there. He can bring healing there. And He can use your story from there.

Collide Book

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Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.

We value showing up as we truly are.

So that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to Collide with.

God started with one woman in the midst of her brokenness, and he used that brokenness to bring about beauty in other people's lives. And now we've invited a few friends.

We've invited a few friends and this has become a movement where thousands of women are daring to believe that not only does God meet us in our brokenness, but he uses us there. Welcome to the We Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide. And today I'm going to spend time sharing the Collide story.

I get asked so often to share it and sometimes it's. It's kind of like, where do I begin?

But today I'm going to spend some time with you and share this God story that's kind of unfolded, as crazy as it's been.

And I rewind back to about, oh, 16, 17 years ago or so and I had a baby and I was a stay at home mom after spending many years in ministry and trying to figure out what it looked like to be at home and invest in my kiddo.

And one ordinary Wednesday, I like to describe it as hurt knocked on my door and I went to the door and I peered through the hole and I couldn't open the door. I just felt like I couldn't bring myself to turn my wrist to the right and let this person in.

And all I saw was pain and confusion and bitterness and addiction and anger.

And I ran upstairs and I hid in a closet with my baby because I didn't want my baby to start crying and let Hurt know that we were actually inside the house. And it was this sort of pivotal moment in my life, I guess, where I'm in the closet and nothing bad is happening to me and hurt is not hurting me.

And I just saw myself reverting back to my childhood and reback back to who I was as a little girl. And fear just overtook me and so did all my anger and all my bitterness and all my pain. And I sat in that closet trying to keep my baby quiet.

And it felt like God opened up that door and came and sat in that closet with me and In a sense, I felt like the Lord said to me, this is an invitation into further healing in your life.

Sure, years before, I had given my life to Jesus Christ when I was 21 years old and I had received his healing and found out that I had a father and that I had a purpose in my life and that God loved me and he was redeeming my story and he was using it for good.

But here I was, nine some years, ten some years later, and God was saying, there's more healing that needs to be done in your life and you need to open up this closet door and you need to climb out of here and go and get help. And that's exactly what I did. That next week, I made an appointment with a Christian counselor.

And I walked into this Christian counseling appointment. And of course, as per typical Christian counselors, or any counselor for that matter, she said, what brings you in today?

And in all my sassy glory, I said, oh, I'm playing hide and seek with my baby.

And went on to explain that there were things that were triggering my past pain and were bringing up my anger and bitterness and my desire to run and escape from pain and the people who've caused my pain. And she right away said, you need to tell this person you can only spend 30 minutes a week with them.

And I yelled at her and I just yelled, no, that is not what I need to do. And it felt like. The way I describe it is like the counselor stepped in the room and all of a sudden it just. It felt pierce the room.

And I looked at this woman and I started grieving and I started crying, and I almost got this inner fight for you and for me and for all the pain that we've been through and how it's wounded us and how we're beginning to wound others. And I just started talking. The counselor didn't say anything, and it was words that I've never heard before. And I just started saying, no.

I was born into wounds. I Collided with my mother's wounds and I Collided with my father's wounds. And those wounds didn't get healing from Jesus, and they wounded me.

And now I'm wounding other people. And I have the great capacity to wound the person that I love the most, my baby. We were all just.

I said, we're all just kind of walking around and we're wounded and we're colliding, and boom, we wound each other. And we need a new kind of collision.

And when I see Jesus, when I see him in the New Testament and he Collides with wounded people, they experience a new kind of collision where they're left more whole than broken. And I have to figure out how to bring that kind of love into all my collisions. I have to figure out how to love the people who wounded me the most.

And it was like all of these words and this sort of epiphany came out of my mouth in this concept of wounded collision that you and I are walking around and we're colliding with each other and we're wounding each other. But if we receive Jesus's healing, then we bring a new kind of collision into all of those that we run into.

And I walked out of this counseling office, I gave her her 85 bucks. And as I was walking to my car, I felt like God said, I'm going to do something in your life with those two words, wounded collision.

Well, at the time, had no idea what that was, nor was I going to go out looking for it. I had just stepped out of a closet, Remember, I wasn't feeling super fantastic about where I was in life.

And that next week, a young college girl from church asked if I would mentor her. And I said to her name was Brittany. I said, brittany, what are you looking for when you say you want to be mentored?

Because a lot of people say they want to be a mentor, but they want different things. And I learned that from being in youth ministry for years.

And I said, are you wanting to come and watch me make a mean chili and just talk to me about your life? Are you wanting me to pray for you? Are you wanting me to, you know, ask you if you're having sex with your boyfriend because you don't want to be?

Are you wanting to learn about Jesus? What, what are you looking for? And she says, oh man, I want to learn more about Jesus.

And so I told her this epiphany that I just had in this counseling office. And I said, you want to get together and look at the life of Jesus and how he Collides with wounded people and what happens when he does?

And she said, yes, I'd love that. And she said, I might have a couple friends who want to come. Would that be okay? And I said, sure.

And so, you know, I made a pound cake and some lemonade and they knocked on my door for our first study. And I opened the door and there were 20 some college age girls standing in line at my door.

And that was the beginning of this group that those girls began to call the Wounded Collision Bible Study. These young college age girls would pile into my living room.

And every single week that we met, we would look at Jesus life and how he Collided with wounded people. We'd watch him Collide with the woman at the well who was so, so thirsty. And he offered her a drink that would quench all of her thirst.

And she ended up changing her village. And we looked at him restoring the shriveled man's hand.

And we watched him as he invited the despised cheating tax collector Zacchaeus to his house and what that did for Zacchaeus wounded view of himself.

And we saw Jesus Collide with the woman caught in the act of adultery and the way that he was the last one standing when everyone else judged her and condemned her. And he knew that at that collision he would up being stoned and killed for his love for her and his grace for her.

And we looked at all of these wounded collisions. And as we watched Jesus Collide with people in the New Testament, we experienced him colliding with our lives.

And there were girls in that group who experienced Jesus's healing and it was the most beautiful thing. There was a girl in that group who'd been molested by her father and it was their special little secret.

And as she started being real about this pain and this wound, Jesus began to heal her life. And it was so, so amazing to watch.

There were girls in that group who struggled with eating disorders and self esteem issues or didn't feel special or who wanted to do big things in the world but questioned whether they could. And we all experienced this beautiful healing. And over the course of the years we grew close. And I ended up going back to my ministry job.

And one particular night, it was open house night at my kids school and the girls were nearing their senior year, graduating and graduating from college.

And I was walking up to this open house for my kids school and my phone started ringing and I was like, you know, I'm going to be focused, present with my kid. Didn't answer my phone then it kept ringing. I kept getting calls from all of these girls in the Bible study.

And so finally I pick up the phone and the person on the other line said that Christine, one of the girls in our Bible study, had been in a terrible accident and she was in the emergency room. Christine was on her way that day to her tutoring job at a church in town.

And she pulled up to a crosswalk because there was a family crossing the crosswalk and she waved to the family who she was about to tutor one of their kids. And as she was allowing them to Cross in front of her car.

A distracted teenage driver came and hit Christine's car, which sent Christine's car into the family, and they killed a child.

Christine was the first responder, and she saw the sights and heard the sounds and was there for all of the trauma and then herself ended up in the er.

So I got that call and of course, didn't go to the open house, Went straight to the ER and found myself entering a hospital room with Christine and her parents. And I watched Christine for days and weeks and months. Question.

How could you possibly be in the worst place at the worst time, to no fault of her own? A child was killed. How. How could God have her in that very place, in that very moment? And how. How could you make sense out of that?

And how could you ever feel safe? Or how could you ever feel like she was struggling to get in her car and drive and go and her life and do things?

Because it was such a devastating experience. And here she truly just had a wounded collision, and our group had to come around her.

Not just need Jesus for our past, or not just need Jesus for our eating disorders and our sexual abuse, but we needed Jesus to come and Collide with us right now in this place where our friend was having a hard time leaving her house and going about life and how she was grieving the loss of this child. And it was this moment in time where we saw Jesus show up and grab the hand of Christine.

And she ended up seeking help and counseling and walked herself towards healing with God's help. And near that space and time, most of those girls were graduating and moving on from this college town that we live in.

And there were four that were staying in our city, Bellingham, Washington. And so they said that they wanted to keep continuing this Bible study.

And I prayed about it, and I felt like God was kind of like, no, I'm not into us for no more Holy huddle Bible study groups. These girls have studied the message for years. It's time they teach the message. And I was like, what? What?

And so I went back to these girls and I said, look, you guys want to keep meeting? This is when I'm sensing the Lord saying, do you want to do an experiment? And we'll call it Collide?

And, you know, these girls had spent years just looking at how Jesus uses nitwits to do amazing things. So it's like, hey, how can we say no to what God could do through us? And so we said, sure, we'll do an experiment.

And so we studied a passage of Scripture where Jesus Collides with a wounded person. And we let that scripture speak to us and infiltrate our hearts. And then we ask the question, how do we teach this to other women?

And we brainstormed all these ways. And we had our first Collide experiment, which was an event at a church in town. And we invited some college age girls.

And it was a potluck and we had like 50 girls. And then it was awesome. And we did another one. We had like 80 girls.

And as I was inviting women leaders, pastors, business women counselors to come in and minister to these young college age girls where they were at, those older women said, oh, my goodness, this is so beautiful what you're doing in this space. Can you do one for women of all ages? And so I said, sure. I mean, we could try and experiment.

So I just invited women of all ages, and women of all ages came, and that was a beautiful day.

And the next thing you know, here I was a college minister at a church, but there was an intergenerational ministry that was growing right before our very eyes.

And it came time for me to leave that ministry job and I felt this call to go and speak and go write and working on this book called Wounded Collision. And I went to the elders of the church and I said, hey, look, they wanted to pray over me before I left and bless me as I left the church.

And I said, there's this thing, it's called Collide, and you can have it and it can be women's ministry at your church. You can kill it. I don't know really know what you want to do with it. And they looked at me and said, willow, this is anointed.

This is bigger than our church, and you need to lean into this. And I kind of heeded that wise counsel. I mean, here was a room full of people that easily could have taken it themselves or could have killed it.

But instead they were like, no, there's something about this. God's doing something and you need to pay attention. And they invited me to pay attention. And so I did.

And I formed an advisory board of men and women across the county from all different churches. And we had four. We had four Collide events in the course of one year. And we just watched what God was doing.

We just paid attention to what God was doing. And over the course of that year, there were several hundred people. And I remember crazy stuff was happening. Like there was this woman.

It's one of my favorite stories, and you'll probably hear me tell it multiple times because it was so eye opening.

All that was happening, really, was that I was opening up about my own pain and my own brokenness and being real about it and inviting Jesus to meet me in that. And inviting a few friends to go along with me to meet him in their brokenness. And crazy stuff was happening.

There were hundreds of women who began to open up about their pain and their past and. And their sh. Shame and their wounds.

And I remember at the end of one Collide, I was picking up garbage in between the pews at First Presbyterian Church, and this older woman shuffled over between a pew and walked right up to me. And I said, hi. And she said nothing. I said, I'm Willow. And she still said nothing. And I thought, oh, God, help me out with this one.

I mean, is she socially awkward? Is she mute? I don't. I don't know what's going on here.

And I could begin to see that she had so much pain and grief inside of her and emotion that it was actually coming from deep down in her guts, and it was rising up from that place out up into her mouth. And then she began to share her story. And she said, you know, I raised my kids in the church. My husband and I, we were so involved. We served.

We were active in all parts of the church. And she said that her adult son was in the military and he killed himself. And she said the church couldn't handle it.

They either said terrible things like he was going to hell, or they actually had pity on us or acted like it didn't happen and never uttered and muttered his name again. And she said, I left the church. She said, that was the day I left the church because I was basically told that they. And God could not handle suicide.

And she said her husband died, and then later on, her other adult child, who was also in the military, attempted to kill herself. And she looked at me and she said, you know what? I told myself, it's fine. It's fine. I buried my husband. I buried my son. I'll bury my daughter.

So calloused, with no emotion. And then she just broke and she started weeping. And she said. I told myself it was fine.

And you could see her heart was broken in a million places from her grief. And she said, today you gave me permission to not be okay today. You told me. You told me that God can handle my pain, that.

That I can come to him and I can grieve and I can be sad and that he can handle anything I have to bring to him. And she said, today marks the day of me coming back in to the doors of the church. That woman, her story inspires me.

It gives me the fuel and the passion to keep going and keep doing what we're doing. Because we are creating spaces where women can be real about what they have going on.

Because we're saying, Jesus can handle whatever you have to bring to him. He will Collide right with you in the closet. He will Collide with you when you're walking through the depths of pain because of suicide.

No matter what you have to bring to him, Jesus can handle all of your pain. And not only can he handle it, but he can heal it. And so those kinds of stories started happening all the time.

And I remember there was a Collide where, where a woman came in and she had a poodle in her purse.

And I ran upstairs and, and I leaned down on these three college age boys who'd been running sound and PowerPoint and video and, and I le on and put my hands on their shoulders and it was like I was out of breath. And I said, oh my gosh, you guys, I think I'm in women's ministry. And they looked at me and started laughing and they're like, what?

You didn't know you were in? You didn't know you were in women's ministry? And I was like, no, but there is a woman with a poodle in her purse downstairs and I have to love her.

You know, I tell that story because this isn't something I was looking to do. I didn't find a, you know, cute logo and a website and go, I want to start a women's ministry.

I was in pain and I was broken and I was in the middle of a freaking closet. And God called me out and invited me to get help. And he invited me to get healing.

And in the midst of my brokenness, he said, I'm going to use you to bring about beauty in other people's lives. Lives. And I started to realize God was doing something here that was beyond what I could even imagine.

And that advisory board voted at the end of that year after we did more Collides for Collide to become a nonprofit. I said, we don't have any money, we don't have any event supplies, we don't have any staff, we have no office, we have nothing.

And, and you're suggesting you, you advisory board, you're suggesting that I step out from underneath the umbrella of the church that sort of blessed me and cheerleaded me and prodded me to step out and, and reach out to all different churches and people outside the church, which was naturally happening. That's why it was being suggested.

We were having women come from Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, non denominational, Assemblies of God, women who are Buddhist, agnostic, had left the church and wanted nothing to do with Jesus.

And they were all coming into this room, and there were hundreds of them of all ages sharing the same pew and powerfully colliding with Jesus and having their life changed. And so this board was suggesting we become a nonprofit and begin to serve women. And. And I was freaked out.

I was like, how in the world am I going to be able to run a nonprofit? I mean, in college I thought I had money because I had a checkbook like, this is crazy. And advisory board voted that we do this.

And that was such a leap of faith of like, okay, well, hopefully God knows what he's doing. And we started hosting more and more conferences, and churches from all over the county have partnered with us. And that's been beautiful.

And we've been getting calls to go into other cities, which is something that we're definitely praying about.

But as all these women were coming to us in their brokenness and opening up about their stories, and I was spending hours and hours every day sitting across from women in coffee shops, listening to their stories of how they were suicidal or they were living in marriages where they felt desperately alone, or where they were cutting themselves, or where they had been raped and completely dismissed for their story. And on and on and on. I started to become overwhelmed with, how am I going to meet the needs of all of these broken people?

And at the same time, years later, Christine, who was in that terrible, wounded collision, was being given money from. From that court case. And she.

She was struggling with receiving any money from that and didn't like the idea of it and felt like there was nothing that could make the loss of a child be okay. And so her and her husband, they went and prayed separately.

And the Lord spoke to both of them and they came back to each other and they heard the same thing to do with the money in the same amount. And so she came to me and she said, God has told both of us that were to give a gift to Kolide to start a counseling program.

And so we started a counseling program. And in our counseling program, we have built a network of Christian counselors and our community.

And when women come to our events, we want to take all the obstacles in the way of a woman saying yes to getting help. And we will. Fiercely. We're fiercely committed to walking alongside women helping them get the help they need.

And we will help place women in counseling. We'll answer all their questions. We'll find out what they're looking for, what they're comfortable with, what they're hoping for.

We will walk them to making that call. But also, if there's a woman it comes to our events that cannot afford to get help.

We've been financially assisting them with getting counseling for years, and we're seeing beautiful redemption stories coming out of that. We also started a mentoring program. One day at a Clyde conference, I just said, hey, is anyone looking to have someone mentor them in their faith?

And we've had so many people over the course of the year sign up, and we've connected women older than in the faith to women younger in the faith, crossing denominational lines.

And women who want to know about God, who want to grow in Jesus, who've never studied scripture before, never given their life to Christ, and they're meeting with mentors. And amazing things started happening because of that. And then we started doing classes where women will come to our conferences.

And we're like, this isn't enough. We don't want you to come to a conference and say, check. That was an awesome day. We actually want you to keep colliding.

And so we talk a lot about taking next steps in our faith. And we've created all of these ways that people can take next steps in their faith, from blah reading the blog to now.

We have this podcast that's about a year old and we have classes and we have in house Bible studies, and we have retreats, and we have a leadership development program where women can join this team where they study scripture and they commit to a year of us equipping them and challenging them. And, and, and we study a passage of scripture where Jesus Collides with someone, then how do we teach this to other women?

And we actually allow women in their giftings and in their insecurities, in their strengths and their weaknesses, to do actual ministry by allowing God's word to impact them and inviting them to Collide with Jesus. And then they take what they're learning about him and they go and they teach it.

And we'll have a thousand women come to these conferences that are all created, shaped and planned by these women, volunteers in our leadership development program. It's absolutely amazing. And it's changing women's lives because they're being empowered.

They're realizing they can do big things for God, that they don't have to have it all together, and they don't have to have, you know, all their past and their shame and their insecurities and their pain and, you know, their, their learning disabilities, whatever they have going. Those things don't have to disappear for God to say, you know what? I can use your life to do something amazing. And they're doing amazing things.

Things. We also started putting our Bible studies into print. And so we have three now. We have, yes, you, and we have the birds and lilies.

And we just came out with personal and powerful.

And Those are these 150 page, beautifully designed colored, just gorgeous Bible studies where we're really inviting women to go deep, to allow Jesus to go to the deep places of their life and, and mend them and stitch them up and then call them forward into the life that they were made to live.

And we seeing, you know, hundreds upon hundreds of women doing those studies and, you know, women's ministries at churches and small groups and work groups and book clubs and people in California, New York, and those, those are starting to spread. And God is doing all of this amazing stuff. And this whole thing has been so crazy. At one point I went to the board and just said, I'm drowning.

There's so much need, there's so much happening. God is doing so much stuff. And I feel like I'm running just to keep up with God.

And there's so much opportunity and all of this ministry that we can do and I need help. And we got to hire our first staff person. That was Anna at 12 hours. And we were running this thing.

You know, all of our event stuff was out of my husband Rob and I's basement. And you know, we're doing all our work out of coffee shops and we had no donors and we rely completely on donors.

So by the way, if you're listening to this and you want to be one of our monthly donors, that's literally how we are sustained and how we keep saying yes to the opportunities God's put in front of us. But we had no money, no donors, no salary. Everything was run out of our basement.

And, and you know, slowly but surely God's basically asked me to become a big girl. And I've had to ask for help and I've had to ask for people to come alongside this ministry and partner with us financially.

And we started doing fundraisers.

And the beautiful thing about that is that we've been able to grow this ministry in ways beyond what I ever imagined because we have so many faithful partners. And we just got our kind of amazing new space in this last year. We Were we have a staff of seven and only two full time people.

The rest are part time.

But we were all kind of crammed in this two room office and for, for two years and you know, about three years ago, and we were looking for another space, we. But we could not increase our expenses. And so I just thought, oh man, it's price per square foot. We're not going to find another space.

And we had a retreat, a team retreat in the fall about a year, year and a half ago. And I walked into the space that was donated to us by Faith Life for the weekend and they said we could use.

And I walked into it and I said out loud to everyone there, I said, oh my God, this is exactly what Kolide needs. It was just a long, narrow, plain building, windows in the front, but room for offices and classes and rooms to counsel women and pray over women.

And we prayed in that, in that building together for that.

And I actually asked my husband to come down after the retreat ended and check it out because I wanted to show him kind of my vision of what we could do in that space.

And in the next few months after that, my husband was driving to work one day and he looked over to his left and saw this little sign that said for lease. And so he called on, on this building and met him and I met this older man named Dell. And Dell showed us this building.

It used to be a wedding store where they sold dresses and had some seamstresses. And it was very plain cinder block walls, nothing special about it. In fact, super outdated, pretty ugly on the inside. And.

But it was exactly like the building that we'd had that fall retreat in where we prayed for God to provide us a space. It was long and narrow with windows in the front, and it was exactly what we could use. We don't need anything fancy.

We just need a space where we can continue to create conversations and spaces and gatherings for women to Collide because we know when the community do, their lives will be changed at each collision. And so we needed staff room for the office for the. We needed rooms for the staff. We needed a space for classrooms.

We needed a space for women to come and cry and grieve. We have women who come here who are suicidal, whose marriages are falling apart.

And longest story short, Dell was charging a really, actually cheap rate, but it was way more than we could afford above our, above our, our projected budgeted amount for rent. And so we kind of walked away, but thanked him for his time.

And Rob just called him randomly and said, hey, if you ever are interested in, in selling your building, let me know. He, Rob didn't even talk to me about that. Husbands and wives should talk about these things.

Anyways, and Dell called him back and said this, you know, 80 some year old man who's retiring and he said, I I'm really thinking about your offer, why don't we meet?

And anyways, long story short, meeting him and he basically said, I would like to sell you this building at this price, which was the price that Rob and I thought it was worth. And he said, and I would like to do owner contract with as little down as possible.

And Rob and I walked out of that meeting and looked at each other and went crazy like this never happens. And it felt like that God was answering the prayers that we prayed that fall and he was giving us a space. And now we have this space.

Talking to you from the podcast room. We have a podcast room, staff offices, we have conference room, we have a work room for all our volunteers.

We have rooms where we can minister to women when they're having a hard time.

And we have a classroom space where we this year had a marriage conference where 50 people came and their marriages were changed, which means their relationships were changed, their relationship with their children, families were changed. We had a class in here with 50 women who are battling and struggling with perfectionism, and we invited them into the freedom that Jesus offers.

We just had a class this last week where women piled in and dealt with family conflict and how to find help in mending relationships that feel broken. And so many beautiful things are happening. We have such vision for what is ahead.

I wish I, I could sit across from you and have coffee and tell you what's on our hearts and our minds. But basically we are seeing God use us in our city to impact all of these women.

But there are women who are traveling from other cities to come to our conferences. And there are people, I was just told a few weeks ago, people in Afghanistan and Peru and China who started listening to our PODC podcast.

And there are our Bible studies are traveling across the nation.

And so we're leaning into taking the content we already have that we already know changes lives and seeing it travel so that we can see women Collide from wherever they're at, whether they're in Minnesota in their car driving to work, or they're in California laying on the beach. Why? Why is that always an example, by the way? I think of California, I think just people lay on the beach.

I'm sure you jobs down there, guys, or they're in Portland at a coffee shop, because people in Portland only sit in coffee shops.

But wherever women are at, our vision is that we want to create more spaces where women can come and authentically run into Jesus as they are, because God can handle wherever you're at. And we want to see him bring about healing. We want to see more women coming out of closets and saying yes and walking towards health.

We want to see more women who have been wounded by the church and left the church. Say, today marks the day, the first day of me coming back into the doors of the church because I was told God can handle my pain.

We want to see more women like the woman who showed up in our office this year and she was wandering and was told that that she could come to Collide and that we would help her. And she was. I don't know, she had white hair. I don't know if she's in her 60s or 70s.

And she showed up one day into our office this last year, and I sat down with her and she said, I don't even know how I got here. And she began to weep and basically described layers and layers, decades and decades of pain she never dealt with.

And she said, I don't know if I can do another day. And I was able to say, I am so, so proud of you that you came here to get help and you've come to the right place.

We're gonna help you get the help you can need. I want to keep saying that to women again and again and again, because that's what Jesus would say.

Jesus wants for us healing and wholeness and goodness. He wants for us to live a life of purpose and destiny and see him do amazing things through us to make this world a better place.

And so that's the beginning of the Clydeski story, because I know God is writing more and more chapters to come. He's blown my mind already. So much so, I cannot wait to see what he has in store next. I'm so glad that you're a part of this Clyde story.

Travel along with us, enter into the story. We'd love you to join this movement in whatever way you want to. Whether you need to come and just receive.

We want to help you walk towards your best life.

Whether you want to come and be a part of partnering with us financially or you want to serve or you want to host one of our Bible studies, we want you to join in this movement. God started with one woman in the midst of her brokenness, and he used that brokenness to bring about beauty in other people's lives.

And now we've invited a few friends who've invited a few friends and and this has become a movement where thousands of women are daring to believe that not only does God meet us in our brokenness, but he uses us there. So keep colliding with us. It's a joy, a privilege and a pleasure. God bless you and we'll catch you next week on the podcast.

Thanks for tuning in to keep up with us.

You can find us on Instagram at We Collide on Facebook as Collide Women, and you can also visit our website at weCollide.net to find our blog resources, event information, and more. One last thing. If you enjoyed this episode, would you take a few seconds and leave us a review?

It seems like such a small act, but reviews help us to keep producing this content and help other women find it too. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's episode and letting us walk with you as you seek and Collide with Jesus.