Get to Know Your Host with L. A. Sprague

Welcome to Christians With Chronic Illnesses, the podcast that magnifies the voices of chronically ill brothers and sisters to inspirit their health journeys and their faith. Get to know your host L. A. Sprague. She is a Jesus loving POTSie who enjoys her husband, Paul, people, plants, whales, the color green, and pizza. She aspires to create a community for believers with long-term and terminal illnesses and educate their loves ones, the church, and people associated with them. CWCI hopes you feel loved, seen, and known as you listen. We also hope you will join the community by following, joining our Discord and Facebook groups, and interviewing on the podcast. We would love to hear from you via email and our socials! Please follow and rate to share the word with fellow sick Christians.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission
• 2:18 Meet The Host
• 3:30 Why This Community Exists
• 4:30 Personal Health Journey And Detours
• 7:53 Vision For Interviews And Voices
• 9:53 Broadening Perspectives Beyond Patients
• 11:18 Content Note And Closing Blessing
• 11:36 Follow, Subscribe, And Safety Disclaimer
• 11:48 Building Community On And Off Mic

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:34

I'm your Jesus loving and pote host, LA Sprague. Welcome to Christians with Chronic Illnesses. Hello! Welcome to Christians with Chronic Illnesses. My name is LA Sprague, and I am so incredibly grateful that you are here spending your precious time with me. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. My name is LA Sprague, as I said. I'm a Christian with POTS, and this is Christians with Chronic Illnesses, the platform that intends to magnify the voices of chronically ill brothers and sisters, including myself, to inspire their health journeys and their faith. Let's get to know each other. I'm your host and I would like to just tell you a little bit about myself. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please comment below or on any social media, and I would love to hear from you and hopefully get back to you. So, as I said, I'm Alice Brig and I love Jesus. I'm a Christian. I am married to Paul J. Tromba, who is the author of The Supernatural Case of an Accidental Time Traveler.

SPEAKER_00: 1:54

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SPEAKER_01: 2:02

I love whales. I love like the animals, specifically humpback, my favorite. Love the color green. Plants, my guys. Love me some good plants. And pizza is pretty phenomenal. And I have pots. I don't know if I said that. I have pots. Um so nice to meet you. Tell me a little bit about yourself. So let me tell you a little bit about this podcast. This is Christians with Chronic Illnesses. As I said, I am seeking to magnify the voices of chronically ill brothers and sisters. So let me tell you a little bit of why I felt the need to make this podcast okay. There's some personal reasons, of course, but there's also reasons for you. I I was noticing that there is a growing space for chronically ill people, and I love that. Incredible. And there's obviously already a huge space for Christians, but I saw a really deep lack for a common space, specifically for Christians that have chronic illnesses. And so I thought, why don't I make this podcast and create a space for both of those worlds to meet? Because I genuinely believe that Christians with chronic illnesses have a very unique and specific and niche story. And I want to hear yours, and I want to give you the platform and space to share yours. I have also had moments where I have been episodic and feeling sick, and what's gotten me through some of those hard times of loneliness or pain is listening to podcasts and hearing stories similar to my own that really just validated my pain. And so my hope is that as I'm interviewing people for this podcast and as you're listening, that you will feel seen and known and love and inspired. The word inspirit means to encourage and uplift. And so I really hope that as you are on this podcast or as you are listening to it, that you really feel that way, that you feel at home, that you feel known. So that's more the big picture why I'm making Christians with chronic illnesses. And I'd like to tell you a little bit about my story. So I graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a major in teaching English to speakers of other languages in 2022. I was really, really hoping and longing, and actually, like specifically believed I was called to be a missionary. And then I was diagnosed with POTS in 2022, developed symptoms about like early 2022, late 2021. And to say the least, my world changed. And I was really having troubles finding something that I could physically do. I mean, obviously I've worked as a cashier and stuff before too, and food service, and I just could not hold a stable job with the symptoms that I was experiencing. And very unstable. My body was very unstable. And it was like, okay, so going overseas does not seem probable right now. Plane rides, I haven't experienced since developing POT symptoms. And medication can be tricky, and insurance can be tricky depending on where you go. And so right now that just doesn't seem like it's in the cards for me. And that is earth-shattering for me. It's really had me rethink who I am and even some of what I believe, it's just like, what do I do? I I do have a heart for you guys. I have a heart for people, people that are hurting, people that are unseen. And if I'm not gonna be a missionary potentially, and or probably, and I can't even hold a full-time job, hardly hold a part-time job, what am I supposed to do? So last November of 2024, I had this idea to start a podcast, asked some advice, did some research, and we're hitting the ground, guys. Full full running. You know what I mean? Running at full speed, you guys know what I mean. And I again I'm just so thankful that you're here because this is for you and could not be done without you. So yeah, I I'm doing this podcast as a means to give me something to to do to to love people, to benefit the world, to glorify God, and I'm just so thankful that you guys are giving me the opportunity and the space to do that as well. And yeah, so so thanks for being here. Thanks for supporting this. It means a lot to me. It seriously means a lot to me, and I hope that it'll mean a lot to you too. And I really can't wait to get to know you. As of right now, the podcast format looks like me interviewing Christians with chronic illnesses, so it can be in person or it can be over Zoom or other platforms. I record an episode asking questions and hearing your story. I want so badly for believers who are hurting and sick to be able to share with the church easily how they're feeling or how we can help them or just be hurt in general. It can be very lonely, there's a lot of misunderstanding, there's a lot of pain and confusion and gaslighting. And we as Christians should be helping more than anyone. And so I wanted to make this space of conversation so that believers who are sick can tell us how to help them, can tell us how they're feeling and how to love them well, as well as encourage fellow sick believers. I also want to create a space for those who are relatives of Christians with chronic illnesses, for those who are pastors of doctors, of teachers, of employers, of partners, of parents of, you know, kids of because I think it's so important to bring a well-rounded perspective of this experience of life that is kind of quiet and kind of again misunderstood and not, you know, experienced by the majority. I I think it's really important to give you guys space to be known in the world. So on this podcast, you will find episodes of people with various chronic and terminal illnesses. I interview people with chogrins, POTS, leukemia, CFS, sarcroidosis, chronic kidney disease, and would love to interview even more. I want Christians with chronic illnesses to be a community. We have a Discord chat, we have a Facebook group, and I would love this to be a place where you can find fellow suffering Christians and relate with each other and pray for each other and love each other and share research with each other. So please, if this sounds like something that would benefit you, I want you to join the community. Whether that's just listening into the podcast or coming on as a guest or joining one of the groups to talk, I want you to be able to make friends and brothers and sisters to relate and love. And also, I want to give you the chance. If you are listening because you know someone with a chronic illness, I want to give you the chance to get to know more Christians with chronic illnesses and hear their stories and learn how to help and relate with them better. So, whoever you are, whether you're a Christian with a chronic illness like me, or you're just a person interested in this topic, I would absolutely love for you to follow and getting a review. And I would love to get to know you. Please, if you are interested in interviewing and being on this podcast, or you know someone who would, send them my email, cwcipodcast at gmail.com. It's also in the show notes. I would absolutely love to hear from you and to get to know you. To be completely transparent with you guys, I'm getting really tired. So I'm probably gonna end this episode. But I hope that you do know that you are loved, and I can't wait to get to know you. Thanks for being a part of the Christians with Chronic Illnesses community, and I'll talk to you guys soon. Thank you for being a part of the Christians with Chronic Illnesses community and for tuning in to our podcast. Please follow, rate, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Patreon. You can also follow our socials at CWCI Podcast. If you're interested in sharing your God given story, we'd love for you to email us at cwcipodcast at gmail.com. This podcast cannot substitute for medical help and is purely for encouragement and entertainment. Please see your doctor before trying anything mentioned on this show.