@eyeheartdesign are you saying your issue was resolved by installing Postman and configuring the Gmail API?
WP Mail SMTP which would not authenticate my email login even though it was the correct info.
Sounds like the info was actually not correct.
So Contact Form 7 is okay, just will not work on its own with many servers or gmail.
Well... that's semi true. Contact Form 7 only generates mail. It is not responsible for delivering mail. Many WordPress hosts do not support the SMTP settings that WordPress ships with. That's why we have SMTP plugins.
Postman has a Connectivity Test, Email Log, Configuration Wizard and many other tools to assist you in getting your WordPress email to send reliably.
Glad you got it sorted out.