Yeah.

But they feel the ability to kind of open up on theirs.

And let me cut all that out.

But that's kind of where I am in this prospect.

And so you were kind of asking, like, where did we get to in September of 19? You know, young dad, young business leader, young husband.

Going into a normal scheduled ultrasound appointments or kind of 12-week appointment, you're going to see we took our 18-month-old son, at times our oldest, and it was going to, hey, we're going to see baby brother, baby sister on the screen.

It's going to be a great appointment.

great.

Talk about the, what that was like, the months after and, and maybe specifically that 57 and a half hours you had with your son, and, uh, yeah, just talk a little bit about what that was like, and, uh, what the story was between you and Hannah during that time.

So our doctors told us when they confirmed the diagnosis, they did ask us if we wanted to keep the pregnancy.

Our personal conviction, this is just us personally as a couple, we believe life happens at conception, so we wanted to continue the pregnancy.

We wanted to trust that God was going to do what he was going to do, even when we didn't understand it.

And so we chose to keep the pregnancy.

We wanted to see that through.

We wanted to honor our son in that way.

Talk about the process and, and how you decided that.

What were you hoping for in that time?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Going into it, so a little bit about Noah's diagnosis, right? The trisomy, the way our specialist described it to us, it's like a building, a blueprint for a building, right? And a blueprint, what's important of a blueprint is that you follow it every step of the way, right? Because from the foundation up, it designs and organizes the house.

So that way it can support the house when it's fully complete.

So what he taught us about Noah's diagnosis is the blueprint was off at every cellular level.

Because I thought, again, Mr. Fix-It, like, okay, he's got a hole in his heart.

Let's fix the hole, right? Why can't we just, I know the surgery's amazing.

What were you doing and what changed?

[laughs]

You're totally fine.

Thank you for opportunity to share.

Matthew, uh, um, I'm a follower of Jesus and, and, uh, my faith means a lot to me.

And in 2019, my second son, Noah, was diagnosed with trisomy 13 Patel syndrome, and I was running two businesses at the time.

I had my wife, we had been married almost six years, and we had a two-year-old, almost two-year-old at home.

And I didn't know how to lead in the midst of this circumstance and this diagnosis, that I had a son that was growing, you know, he was still in the womb.

What would you say if an employee experiences a massive personal tragedy, what is the first thing you think a leader or a company should do?

that maybe feel some

shame there, it's okay.

You want to know what's the best way I can take care of my kid.

And so we started doing all this research, and it was all devastating.

And so for the next, it was about 10 days later, we got a phone call from our doctor.

that our results had come in.

We were standing outside on our back porch, Hannah, myself, and our oldest son, Walker, and she confirmed that he had trisomy 13.

Do you feed them during this time? Are you holding them? Is he crying? What is that like?

Mm-hmm.

That, that's a big deal for us is get the family unit multi-generational outside enjoying their property, either with outdoor pest control or with outdoor lighting or a combination of both.

So fast-forward several years, I started getting asked to speak at events.

Um, I, I was a bivocational pastor for about a decade, um, through college and, and the first part of my business career, and I love to teach.

I love to speak from stage.

It's a calling that I have and a gifting that God's given me.

And so that's really been just an opportunity for us to share, share our story, mistakes we've made along the way, right? There's, there's so much that we've found that's helped our business grow.

Yeah.