When Truth Prevails: Redemption and Legacy with John Raley

Welcome to the Wayne Watson Podcast, where Grammy nominee and multiple-dove award-winning artist Wayne Watson engages in lively conversation with remarkable people from every walk of life. Artists to healthcare professionals, athletes, and leaders to everyday believers whose stories reflect the power of faith at work in the world. Join us as we go beyond the spotlight and into the heart of what it means to live with purpose and conviction, diving into real conversations about the moments that shape us, the faith that sustains us, and the God who inspires it all. Now, here's your host, Wayne Watson. But Eric had state-required visits a couple of times a year. Again, he's being raised to believe his father killed his mother, so there's no reason for him to love his father, and when he was 13, he told his father he didn't want to come anymore, and Michael didn't want to force him. And then when he was 18, he changed his name. He announced that Michael no longer had parental rights. He was adopted by the people that had raised him. He left no forwarding address. So Michael didn't know what his son's name was to where he lived. That's the thing that broke him. That's the thing. And he surrendered his life to God and said, I'm here. If I spend the rest of my life in prison, I spend the rest of my life in prison, but I want it to be with you. And God comforted him, and he describes that in his book. Did he write the book? Did you help him write the book? I listened to it. No, I did not. But the only thing I did was when he got out, he told me, and I knew that he had a master's in English, that he got while he was in prison. Wow. In fact, he came to the Rochere-Sheron unit and worked in the fields down here south of Houston during the summer so that he could do the U of H correspondence course. Wow. So he's a great writer. Wow. And his letters to me are brilliant. I would send him books, but, you know, I can't send them directly because that becomes kind of very Shawshank Redemption-y where you, you know. So you have to have Barnes & Noble send the book to him. But, you know, I sent him complete works of Shakespeare. I sent him a story on the Lawrence of Arabia. We had fun. But when he got out, he said, you know, I kept a journal. And I go, whoa. Make a Xerox copy. Put the original in a safety deposit box. That's your book. Yeah. Just clean that up. Yeah. I've read it and listened to the audio book both. Oh, really? How is he today? Where is he? Great. We talk all the time. Every other day we're talking or texting. Really? Yeah. So he married a woman from church. Oh, let me tell you, around the time we got him out, I asked him if he wanted us to help find Eric, his son. And he asked us to please find Eric. And so I turned it over to the best investigator I know, Kelly Raley. And she again did a nationwide search. And it took nearly a week. And she was looking at. all possibilities of what his name could be and any pictures online. Finally, she found some wedding pictures of a guy that would be about the right age with facial features that looked a little bit like Michael's. His first name was Eric, and she went, and this guy was hiding in plain sight. He was teaching at straight Jesuits. Yeah. Here in Houston? A few miles from my office. Oh, my God. It's weirder. His mother-in-law played tennis with my paralegal. Yeah. God winks and smiles sometimes. I really believe it. So I tried to contact Eric to tell him that we had DNA evidence that confirmed that his natural father was innocent. trying to find his mother's killer, but I wanted to let him know that this was coming because the media might be calling him and I wanted him to be ready. I wouldn't say his name to the media, but they have a way of figuring things out. You know, and I had that scene from Apollo 13 in my mind where they're all out on the lawn, you know, with their cameras and stuff. And so I didn't want that for him. No response, no response. And I sent him another one. No response. Emails. I called. Didn't want to start on the call. So I did what anybody would do. I asked Jim Jackson for advice, and he said, like he always did, I'm on it. And he called the priest who's the head of Strait Jesuit, who was, of course, a friend of Jim's, and told him that someone in his flock had news that he needed to hear. And so then I got a response from Eric. What is this about? And I told him. And so it was just, it took time. But eventually after Michael was out and we identified the murderer and helped bring him to justice, we were able to reunite Eric with Michael. Oh. In our house. Oh my gosh, John. And it was such a special moment because Michael hadn't seen his son in 12 years. And, um, Hadn't been alone with his son in 25 years. And so I, uh, Michael was in the foyer pacing. We were waiting for Eric to come. Finally, Eric, who was a little late, came and showed up. And, uh, with his wife, very great with child, beautiful wife, Maggie. And she was pregnant with Michael's. Grandson. Gonna be a granddaughter. Granddaughter. Yeah. And. So there was silence. I didn't want to disturb the silence. Kelly's in the kitchen. She's like, I can't. And I didn't want to say anything. But Michael held out his arms. And Eric slowly walked into his arms and then hugged. And Michael said, son. Chewing. And Eric said, dad. And I think just for a minute. I saw what heaven must be like. And we went to dinner. Michael was nervous. He was trying to catch up 25 years of time and was talking too fast. I could tell that Eric was like, what? And so we got home, and I thought, I've got to solve this. You know, I'm me, and I'm just going to. And I realized the solution. We had an old swing out back where, you know, you could sit two guys in and swing back and forth. You know those kind of swings? Yes. The old vintage. And it was an adult swing, not a child swing. And so I made two cups of coffee, and I said, come with me, guys. And I sat them down on that swing in the backyard. It was by now dark, except for the lights of the house. But, I mean, it was pretty dark back there. Yeah. I said, sit down, guys, and I handed them each the coffee, and I said, no rush to come in. Take as long as you like. We'll talk to Maggie about the baby and everything, and take as long as you like. And they were out there for over an hour, and that helped. But I appreciate Kelly finding him and how God brought them together. And then after the prosecutor was disbarred and put in jail, then Michael asked me, what can we do to try to keep this from happening to other innocent people? And I remember thinking, well, I'm a civil trial lawyer. What I want to know the other side's evidence, all I have to do is send written discovery and I can see their investigation. I can see their statements. I can see their expert reports. I can. Why, in a criminal case, when it involves a man's or woman's life and liberty, why is it that more important than just money? And I asked some friends of mine that were criminal defense lawyers, and they said, there's really no answer to that question. And I said, well, maybe that's what we need to do. And so we got some really smart people to help us write what became the Michael Morton bill, which passed unanimously. How often does that happen? Right. And it requires the prosecutor to disclose the complete investigation file with the defense before trial. So there can be no longer a concealing of evidence of innocence. It's illegal. It already was illegal. It has been illegal since 1963, United States Supreme Court of Brady v. Maryland. But the problem is, if the prosecutor is the gatekeeper, the decider as to what evidence is disclosed or not disclosed, if the prosecutor chooses not to disclose evidence of innocence, the defense lawyer has no way of knowing what has happened. Because we don't have psychic power. Right. So, yeah. So what the Michael Morton Act does is it takes away that power from the prosecutor. And every day in every courthouse in Texas, every weekday in 254 counties in Texas, a defense lawyer stands up and says, Your Honor, under the Michael Morton Act, we demand to see the prosecutor's investigation. So, John, is this the case of a lifetime for you? Well, I was thinking about Atticus Finch's quote to Scout when she was asking him about the Tom Robinson matter. He said, Scout, by nature of the profession, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. Yeah. So this one's mine, I guess. Yeah. I'm blessed to have more than one. I don't know if you have time to talk about the Hannah Overton case or not. Sure. But you should hear it. I want to make sure. I'll try to give a more truncated version. Hannah and Larry lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, strong Christians, had several little children, very active in their church. And— There was a little boy in the church the same age as their kids, and this little boy, his natural mother was a drug addict who had abused him. CPS took the child away. He'd been in several foster homes which were abusive. So he's now three and a half, and he's got psych issues. Nobody's going to adopt him. But Hannah and Larry, being the good people they are, at the request of their children, thought they would start the adoption process and give him a forever home. It was like a trial period. They could give him back if it wasn't working out. When she was looking after the baby in the other room, he had an undiagnosed child. eating disorder called pica. I mean, the clues were there. He tried to lick the floor, eat glue in Sunday school, stuff like that, you know. Seemed to have, liked salt a lot. So anyway, he got into the pantry on a little footstool. Hannah did not know this, but this is the only thing that makes sense with the evidence. and put either straight salt or Zatarain spice into the soup he was eating and then knocked it back and got salt poisoning. And Hannah didn't know what it was, but he was having these first flu-like symptoms and then kind of worse, and she and Larry rushed him to emergent care, and they couldn't figure it out either. Ultimately, he died of salt poisoning. And without any evidence at all against this young mother, who had never even gotten a traffic ticket, Sunday school teacher, they convicted her of life, no possibility of parole, took her baby out of her arms, put her in prison 400 miles away, and, Larry, who was the father of the year as far as I'm concerned, went 400 miles every Saturday on his motorcycle to visit her. And once a month loaded all the kids in a minivan, but they weren't able to touch their mother. She had to put her hand up to the plexiglass. Anyway, she was in prison seven years before we were able to prove that she was actually in a sudden exonerator. We used scientific evidence again. one of the world's leading experts on salt poisoning, and he said out of 70 cases that have been studied worldwide, 68 of them were children with a mental disorder like pica that self-ingest the salt. Two of them were done by an abusive person, but there were signs of the abuse. There were bruises where they'd forced it down him or cuts on the lip. And plus, you don't wake up in the morning and be a child abuser. What was the charge that put her in prison for life? Murder. Murder. Murder. And they were a little confused about, well, they actually alleged both. They alleged that she intentionally poisoned the child with salt, and after he was affected, she delayed taking him to the hospital. Neither was true, but the media convicted them before the jury heard a word of evidence. Right. Things like this. She had a lawyer who had an agreement with the district attorney that if Hannah was going to be charged, that she could turn herself in and she would have. but they didn't, they didn't keep the deal. They did a full armed and dangerous arrest face down to the pavement, knee in the back, handcuffs, both her and Larry guests who were invited to watch it and film it. All the local news stations. That was the news that night. The jury said, had already decided that she was guilty before they heard a word of evidence. And that was all set up by the prosecutor. So it's another sad situation. But here's the best part. Hannah is a strong Christian. She started a Bible study. First it was three, then it was five, then it was 10, then it was 50, After seven years, she had 100 women in a weekly Bible study that she wrote. She told me I always thought I'd be a missionary. I just didn't know. In prison. Yeah. And when I first met her, I'll never forget. We had a habeas corpus, what became a trial that lasted over a week. And she was brought in in the prison jumpsuit, and her hands were in handcuffs, and her ankles were chained. And she had her hands like this. And she put them over. She said, open your hands beneath mine. And I did, and I opened my hands beneath hers. And she dropped in a piece of paper that was just, I mean, if I could pull a Post-it note in half and then roll it up, it was just barely visible. But I unrolled it, and it said, The Lord is with those who protect my life. And it was from Psalms. And she quoted the verse because she'd memorized it. And then she said, that's you. And I said, oh, don't make me cry before the match comes in. She brought me one every day. And finally, Kelly made me frame them because I just had them in an envelope in my desk. But they're very special. Anyway, so when she got out, if you're proven actually innocent like Michael was and like Hannah was, there is state compensation for wrongful conviction. Mm-hmm. And nobody would ever take money to go to prison if you had to make that deal because prison's horrible. But she took her money and she started a ministry called Cindeo Ministries. She speaks at churches all over. But she currently helps. It's hard to even say this out loud. 10,000 women in Texas prisons. She's got Bible studies she teaches them, and she supplies them with female hygiene things that the state does not supply and things to help cool them in the summer because there's no air conditioning in those prisons, and it's 130 degrees. What? And she helps them get jobs when they get out. And— Transition to society. And so it's based on Hebrews 13, 3, which says, remember those in prison as if you were bound with them. And the word bound is the word sendeo. Mm-hmm. And she says, I was bound with them. I will always be bound with them. They are my sisters. And so she has Cindeo Ministries. And I encourage all of your listeners to look up Cindeo Ministries online because it does much good. I'll put that on the screen. There's a link you could link. Yeah, I'll put that on there. But yeah, I've had several opportunities to do things like that. I did the civil work to feed the family and get the kids through college, but This pro bono criminal work is the work you do in the evening when other people are watching TV. What a life. Growing up in a small town, I didn't dream big. I never dreamed to do what I have done with my life. I don't know if you did or not. But thinking of Hannah... thinking about what am I going to be when I'm a grown woman? And in no way, shape, or form would Michael Morton or Hannah ever imagine going to prison, first of all, for something they didn't do, and there's something good coming from that that affects maybe hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives through the Michael Morton Act, affecting people every day in 254 counties in Texas. Well, the Michael Morton Act has been picked up by several other states, and that's a movement to make it nationwide. I mean— It's crazy, Wayne, crazy to think about because for six and a half years, nobody knew or cared about the case. No media attention, nothing. The only people who cared about it were Michael and his parents and his sister and Kelly and me and our friends with the New York Densus Project. I mean, the prosecutor went up, tried to go in the media and say that I was silly, that I was grasping at straws, that I was searching for the mystery killer. I didn't care what he said about me. I still don't. I try to earn the respect of people I respect. Right. But to answer your question, Michael and Hannah, I would say they're just like any of us, but I would say they're better than we are. Oh, absolutely. And – to think that people like that. Michael is like Tom Hanks or Jimmy Stewart or something. He's just like the, the, the normal, every guy. Yeah. And as a Sunday school teacher and a mother, and if those two people could be sentenced to life imprisonment on frame up jobs with evidence of their innocence can feel that happened in Hannah's case too. Um, It could happen to any one of us. It could happen to you. It could happen to me. It could happen to any one of your viewers. If we don't think our life could change like that, we're wrong. We kiss our spouse goodbye in the morning, and our spouse is killed when we're at work, and we're framed for a murder. Or we take care of a baby in the other room, and the other child gets into the pantry and eats something they're not supposed to eat. And we're framed for murder. I just can't imagine... When you're done with today, you're not a proud man. You're extremely accomplished. I found it difficult to find a good use of the word pride. I think the Scripture doesn't give us many options. I think Paul said the only thing to be boasting about is our names are written in the book of life. I have taken the track of saying I'm more grateful than proud of. I'm more thankful for what's happened than proud of what's happened or what I've done or what hasn't been accomplished. I want to lighten. This is heavy, heavy stuff. Yeah, I got two more heavies for you, Lighten. Okay. One is Michael's case was about me losing for six and a half years almost everything I tried. I didn't realize... I was up against such a corrupt political machine that had so much power and arrogance. And I kept praying about it because I kept losing. There was a real temptation to just say, I've done my best, but it's just not working out. And the answer to my prayer was always, don't quit. Just keep going. And I remember calling Jim Jackson the day before a hearing close to the end. And I said, Jim, I'm going to lose. I'm right on the law. I'm right on the facts. If justice prevails, I'll win, but I'm going to lose because of the location, because of the venue. And he said, I'm on it. I go, you're on it? He goes, yeah, I'm on it. What time's the hearing? I said, it's at nine tomorrow morning. He goes, okay, I'm on it. And then he called me back and like 30 minutes later, he said, okay, there's going to be dozens of people pray for you right now. And tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., there's a lot more that are going to pray for you. It's all arranged. And I went, wow. So the same thing. Her church was supportive. Her pastor is a great guy. And at the time of closing argument at the end of the Habbos trial, the pastor, The pews, the courtroom had become pews. Oh, yeah. Because they were all sitting, all of her church was there. And all down the hallway to the elevator. And when I stood up on closing to address the court and said, Your Honor, they all joined hands. It went like this. And I could see them doing it. I went, my God, they're all praying. And they told me later they were all praying for God to give me words to say, and I promise I've said things I didn't prepare to say. But I've never felt such a rush of spiritual energy. So I don't take credit for any of this. God was always on all of these things, and I'm grateful to have been an instrument for his will and for his kingdom. But yeah, you're right. I never thought that I would be involved in cases like this. I thought trying to do my job to take care of my family, and then all that stuff happened. Okay, what's your lighting thing? Well, when you said, this may not be appropriate, when you talked about they didn't take a mold of the footprint outside of Michael's back fence, it reminded me of an Andy Griffith episode where someone was stealing cows, and the mayor was offended that Andy and Barney had not been investigating enough to satisfy the voter. So they brought in someone from the FBI. And he shows up with his bow tie on, and there were prints around the corral. And he asked Andy, he said, I assume you've made a mouage. And he asked Andy, you know what a mouage is? Yeah, a plaster cast of the prints. Now, we didn't think it would be necessary. And so then he goes over to Barney and he says, the sheriff tells me that you decided not to make a milage. And Barney had this kind of puzzled look on his face. He says, yeah, we decided not to make a milage. Oh, we told a few people. We didn't want to make a big milage out of it. So, you know, it's, I don't know why my, your brain goes to the depths of law. I'm always fascinated by lawyers who can cite cases from 100 years ago, so-and-so versus so-and-so. I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Well, neither can I, but I can cite cases. Well, that's a blessing as well. Look, I have seen you play music without – music in front of you for an hour. I've seen you just sit down at a piano and, and, you know, all the notes, you know, so I can't do anything else. I tried to tune up a Ford Torino way back in the seventies and before it was all electronic and digital. And I, it never was the same. Brother tried to rebuild his pickup truck engine in high school. And because he was taking auto shop class and he did it and he finished. But when he finished, there was a box of parts. He didn't know where they were supposed to go. Yeah. Like, I'm not really sure what these are. Oh, man. Yeah. I ask this question of everybody. You've defended people, I guess. Have you defended death row people before? Have you? Yeah, well, Alfred Dwayne Brown had been on death row when evidence that it had been concealed was found. And so he was released and the charges against him were dropped. But I was asked to investigate it by the district attorney's office here to determine whether he should be recharged and, or declared actually innocent or just leave it the way it is where he would, he spent 12 years in prison, but he's, he's, he's now free. Um, and I spent 10 months on it and thought, found that he could not physically have been at the crime scene because of the telephone records, which had been concealed. So there was a chance of him being back on death row. But Michael was life and Hannah was life without parole, which means she was going to die in prison in about 50 or 60 years. Well, that's certainly nothing to make light of at all. But I always ask people, I said, if you had to pick your last meal, John, What would it be? Pancakes. I love pancakes. Pancakes. Yes. And maybe some poached eggs that are a little bit runny and some, some bacon to kind of dab those with. Okay. Did I not hesitate long enough in giving that answer? That's awesome. Well, I'm so thankful for you and for what you do for our community. I failed to mention that in, I don't know what brought this to pass, but in 2013, I read you were voted Houstonian of the year. And I didn't even know there was, I didn't even know you could run for it. I would have put my name in. I didn't run for it. I just got a phone call that, that, the Houston Chronicle had made that decision. That's awesome. That's nice. Yeah. That's awesome. And you mentioned this Wikipedia site. I had nothing to do with that. I don't know who did it. No, it's a little scary, isn't it? It is. People can put whatever they want, and you can go in and edit my page, and I could edit yours. Okay. Right now. I didn't even know that. I don't know anything about that stuff. But somebody told me that I had it. There's apparently a YouTube video out about the Morton case that I didn't know about. It's going all around the world. I'm getting emails from all around the world. And finally, one guy go, Why are you emailing me? This was a long time ago. He goes, the YouTube video. Yeah. And what it does is there are two current documentaries about the case, about 10 years apart, and it splices them together into one 30-minute thing. But the funny thing is it shows how much I aged. During that, in fairness, it was a tough 10 years. Oh. But I'm much younger at 50 than. Yeah. Bet. Bet. Let me finish with this then. Yeah. We'll go back heavy for just a minute. People in your circles, in church and in government and in law, probably have vastly different political affiliations and zeal about certain things. Why do you think we're so polarized these days? For such things. We are the first generation of Americans to choose our news sources based on whether they say things we already agree with. And so when you and I grew up, Walter Kronsman, I had reporting on the moon landings or whatever. It's just very factual. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's one famous episode when he visited Vietnam and they came back and he said, okay, I'm going to give an opinion. This is not reporting. This is just what I personally think. And he said what he personally thought. And then that ended. He goes, okay, back to the news. But these days, it's kind of all opinion. And even the... The news is weighted one way or another. All stations do it. I can't watch it because I'm a trial lawyer, so I see the propaganda in it. But they sell advertisements by, I don't know how much your viewers are going to want to hear this. There are endorphin rushes of fear and anger, anger and fear. And so people watch it and they get angry and afraid. on every channel, but they select the channel that supports what they believe. Our political leaders have picked up on that as well. I worked for Senator Warren in 1980 and 1981 in D.C., and back then you voted with your party about 70% of the time. I say it was like both sides were on the 40-yard line, and they would argue with each other, and then every once in a while team captains would come out to the 50, and they would shake hands on a deal, and there would be a bipartisan legislation. And then they'd go back to the 40-yard line just a little bit. Now they're kind of, depending on your point of view, maybe not even on the field anymore, maybe behind the goalposts. You had to get each other from a very long distance. But there was a lot of bipartisan legislation at that time and really hasn't been much since the mid-'80s. I remember that the freshman U.S. senators used to get together, all of them, Republicans and Democrats. If you're a first-termer at somebody's house once a month and eat hamburgers and talk trash on each other and find ways to solve the country's problems, it's been a long time since that. So polarization is a snowball that just keeps getting bigger. In a nutshell, what would you suggest to individuals who might be watching that might pull the camera back a little bit from this very, what's the word, myopic, just laser focus on what we want to believe and what we ingest? Is there a suggestion on how to perhaps take a little broader view and have a better perspective? Well, I mean, all I have is my opinion, but I am not a fan of television news, even though I've been on CNN and Fox and Katie Couric, 60 Minutes. But I'm sensitive to the fact that a lot of them market to fear and anger. And so I would suggest people find new sources they trust to read and then even take that with grains of salt and do research beyond it. If your source of information is somebody's blog, particularly a political pundit whose job is to foment opinions, then, you know, You know, it's fascinating. Beware, be careful of that stuff. It's fascinating to me that so many of us claim to be Jesus followers, and yet we process what is a relatively simple message. That is a crucial thing that you just said. Yeah. Crucially important. When I was teaching Sunday school one time, somebody wanted me to, mentioned some political event that just happened. And I said, I'm not going to do that. And I'm going to tell you next week, the reason I won't. And, um, The reason I won't is because we're in church to worship our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We're not in church to talk about politics. And I wouldn't be comfortable in any church that told me how to vote one way or another on anything. I mean, I say it this way. I'm a passionate Christian. I'm a patriotic American. And those are two very different things. And if anybody tries to tell you the same thing, you need to watch out. Look at Jesus. a revolution to overthrow the Roman occupation. And they petitioned for it. And he had more important things to do. What he cared about was going to happen in a million years, you know, what was going to be important in a million years. So you see him kind of backing away from politics and telling Caesar, my kingdom is not of this world. And meaning it. Does that mean we should not be politically involved? No, of course not. But let's get off all this stuff about if you're a Christian, you got to vote my way. Because Jesus was not a Democrat or a Republican. partly in disagreement with both parties on many things. So... Nor was he Caucasian. Yeah. Yeah. Funny story. At the risk of being overly simplistic about it, if we are, again, this is what confuses me, because we claim to possess the spirit of the Lord And yet our zeal is so misplaced, in my opinion. But at the same time, if we listen to our heart as you watch channel whatever or news show whatever, if you listen to the Holy Spirit in you, would you agree that there are times when the Spirit will give us pause and, to be careful. Both sides, both sides do it, Wayne. You know, and both sides think that their side doesn't do it. It's just the other side that does it. And so again, the, but, yeah, I think as Christians, we are to be in the world, but not of the world. Our values are supposed to be different. And if we lose sight of that, then we've lost sight of a lot. So, I mean, our founders did not want a Church of America. They had experienced the Church of England, where where constables could walk the street. And if you weren't on church and Sunday morning, you could be arrested. And where the state's taxpayer money funded the churches, um, our founders wanted people to be able to worship freely the way they chose to worship. And, um, It was really important to them. That's why they put it in the First Amendment with freedom of speech and freedom of the press and freedom to assemble, because that was really bedrock. And the First Amendment is so brilliantly written. I just wish people would read it. I mean, the state cannot establish religion. Right. The state cannot prohibit free exercise of religion. So the state can't force a child to pray. But the state can't prevent a child from praying. There's algebra. There will be prayer in schools. Well, I find more often my heart is heavy and saddened than angry. over the state of things. And I'm okay with that. I don't want to live in bereavement and, you know, you've got to consider it. Well, you know, I lament the loss of civility. Yeah, absolutely. The U.S. Senate was a deliberative body in 80 and 81 when I worked for Senator Boren. There was, they were polite to each other. They disagreed on a lot of things, on a lot of policies, but there was a sense of honor and integrity about the way they conducted business. There wasn't the taunting and the name calling and the boasting and all the things that, You know, I don't see any Jesus in any of that, quite frankly. Very childish. It's not my place to say somebody is and is not a Christian. I would never do that. But Jesus did tell us that the words we use reflect our heart and who we are. And other passages, James and others say, you know, for people of faith, then that's kind of revealed by Jesus. our deeds. Again, whether or not somebody's a Christian, it's between them and God. I'm not involved, but I can look at somebody's words and go, okay, yeah. Because we're supposed to be discerning. Yes. It's not easy, and it's a daily walk. It's supposed to be. Discernment has to be one of your strengths to discern the truth and where the next question and what to ask and how to investigate. And like you say, you're married to the best investigator, you know. Well, thank you to brother for spending time with me and we could go on and on. I'm so glad we had a chance to do this and finally get it technically under our belt. Well, great. Thank you. It's a real honor. your music was really important to me when I was young. And when I joined the church where you sang, it was really important to me. And so you've been a real inspiration to me too. Thank you, John. God bless you, brother. Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to the Wayne Watson Podcast, where stories of faith, purpose, and everyday life meet and continue to uplift hearts around the world. Be sure to follow, leave us a review, and share this episode with a friend. To learn more about Wayne's music, ministry, and upcoming projects, visit waynewatson.com. Every journey of faith begins with a story. and every heart finds its rhythm in the Lord. Until next time, go well, and may you keep walking in step with His song flowing through you.