🎧 Are you carrying the weight of the world quietly, trying to be “strong” for everyone else, feeling abandoned, misunderstood or even painted as the villain for finally telling the truth, wondering how you are supposed to keep functioning when your soul feels crushed and feeling like you’re doing it ALL ALONE.

This episode is for you.

In today’s episode, Jana gets raw and tender about some of the heaviest seasons of her life, the kind most people never see. She shares what it was really like to wake up alone with overwhelming responsibility, to cry on the floor day after day, to feel abandoned by people who should have stayed, and to discover that silence is not holy and rejection can actually be God’s protection.

This is a faith filled, real talk episode about grief, trauma, spiritual warfare, and the God who sits with you on the floor, not just in the pretty parts of your story. If you have felt invisible, crazy, disposable, or like you might not make it through, Jana recorded this one with you in mind.

There is also a powerful closing prayer over every listener, especially those who have felt tempted to give up.

_______________________________

Gentle content note:

This episode includes honest mention of deep grief, trauma, divorce, abuse and spiritual pain. Please care for your heart and listen at your own pace.

💬 Join the conversation: If this episode spoke to you, leave a comment or review and share where you are listening from. You can always send a private message if you are not ready to share publicly. You are not alone.

🌿 Resources mentioned in this episode:

1. Worship song that carried us: “The Blessing” by Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes

2. If you are in crisis or need mental health support:If you or someone you love is struggling with suicidal thoughts, emotional overwhelm, or a mental health crisis, please reach out for help right away. You do not have to carry this alone.

• In the United States, you can call or text 988 or chat at the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988lifeline.org for free, confidential support 24/7. ⁠988 Lifeline+1⁠
• Veterans and their loved ones can dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255 for the Veterans Crisis Line.

3. Seek some of our favorite support groups, health coaches, and healing: Resources at ⁠www.graftedroots.co⁠

Follow Jana:

Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | YouTube → @thedreamdoers.podcast

🌐 Visit my website at ⁠⁠www.thedreamdoers.com⁠⁠

______________________________________________________________

✨ Episode Highlights:

00:00 Introduction: Embracing Vulnerability
02:32 The Weight of Silent Struggles
06:00 Finding Hope in Darkness
08:53 The Impact of Trauma
11:58 Lessons from Nature and Animals
16:28 The Power of Letting Go
19:15 The Role of Faith in Healing
21:50 The Cost of Truth and Boundaries
24:40 Rejection as Protection
28:26 You Are Not Disposable
32:38 Conclusion: You Will Make It Through
34:59 Navigating Trauma and Healing
37:47 Miracles in the Midst of Struggles
41:21 Facing Fears and Embracing Solitude
46:21 The Journey of Acceptance and Growth
50:37 Finding Hope and Purpose in Pain
56:18 God’s Provision and Unanswered Prayers
01:01:11 Transforming Pain into Purpose
01:04:36 A Prayer for Healing and Strength
01:05:33 You Tube – Outro – Dream Doers.mp4
01:05:41 S1E20.mp4

______________________________________________________________

Show Notes: S1, E20 – “No One’s Coming For You!“

Jana Marler (00:12)
Welcome back to the dream doers podcast. Thank you all for joining me today. Whoever’s listening in I would love to know actually where you’re listening in from leave it in the comments. How fun is that? ⁓ Okay, this is going to be a more difficult one to talk about to be honest and it really kind of stinks because my last episode was such a high Vibration like such a good energy And I’m sitting here like a midst

this sunlight right here in my kitchen studio and the sun’s about to peek past the house and it’s gonna beam right on me and it’s such a reminder of light and love and hope and beauty and warmth and so I’m gonna do my best to get through this one. There are things I want to share that are raw and straight from my heart and honestly they might be a little hard for me to get through.

But I want to be honest and I want to put myself out there so that someone listening doesn’t feel alone.

So if this reaches even that one person who has been carrying the weight of the world quietly, then opening up today is worth it. So here we go. For those of you watching me, you might see me get red-eyed and teary-eyed and start to get poofy-eyed and you know what? It is what it is. I would rather be vulnerable and allow space.

for realness and connection and bonding with other humans than to not, you know? Okay, so here we go. Yesterday I saw a post. I follow OneMom’sBattle on Facebook and Instagram and if you know that account, you know it’s a refuge for people going through some of the hardest seasons of their lives.

and she is someone I have watched advocate for a lot of good, but it comes with a lot of turmoil and a lot of trauma, a lot of personal, spiritual, emotional development, ⁓ lot of resilience. ⁓ And she shared yesterday that one of the mothers in her community had taken her life.

A mom who’d been fighting for safety and stability and truth. A mom who could not carry the emotional and mental weight one more day. It’s already getting to me. And heartbreakingly, this is not rare. I wish it were, but it’s happening everywhere. To mothers, to fathers, to children, to people who are doing everything they could just to stay alive inside a system.

more specifically that was supposed to protect them. And God’s word says in Psalm 34 that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. And that scripture has taken on a whole new meaning for me because crushed in spirit is exactly what so many people are living right now. I get so many messages including last night of a wonderful human, like one of the gems of the world. I keep referencing.

these women I know as like, man, you are a gem. You are the kind of friend that everybody would die to have. You’re the kind of partner that everybody would love to have. know, it’s how are so many things happening to so many people and continued. It’s not just one or two big bombs, you all. It’s a lot. And I’ve had to learn in this life that it just is. That’s this life we’re living.

There are bad things, there are scary things, there are hard things, there are heavy things, there are grieving seasons. There’s so much that we evolve through

Jana Marler (04:07)
And I want to insert and say something here that might challenge people a little bit. Silence is not holy. Ignoring what someone is living through is not kindness. Pretending everything is fine does not bring healing actually. It actually isolates the person who is suffering. When we refuse to acknowledge the reality

someone is waking up to every day, we are not protecting them. We are dismissing them. There is this idea in some circles that if we just focus on the good, the bad will somehow disappear. But that is not how life works. That is not how trauma works. That is not how faith works. People are living in homes where abuse never pauses. People are fighting cancer that does not take weekends off. People are navigating grief that hits the moment they open their eyes.

They’re dealing with systems and diagnoses, and heartbreak that do not lighten just because someone tells them to be more positive or think about the positive. Naming pain is not negativity, it’s honesty. It is dignity. It is honoring the truth of someone’s lived experience. Jesus never ignored suffering. He met people in it. He acknowledged it. He touched it.

He healed it. Scripture says that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, not the ones pretending to be fine. So when someone says, just focus on the good, it may come from love, but it often lands as dismissal.

What people need is presence, not platitudes. What we need is witness. What we need is acknowledgement. Silence is not holy. Compassion is holy. Truth is

willing to see someone’s hurt without rushing them through. That is holy.

Jana Marler (06:00)
I’m not here to talk about specific details of my own situation. I’m here to talk about the emotional and spiritual reality that so many people are experiencing and silently. A lot of my journey was silent. And still a lot of my journey is forced silence

The waking up alone to overwhelming responsibility, the emails you brace yourself for before even opening them up, the meetings you take while your heart is pounding, you know, the anxiousness, the worry, the fear, the paperwork you sign with tears that you hide, the phone calls you make from the car because you don’t want your kids to hear your heartbreak.

People are walking through situations they never imagined they would face. Divorce, abuse, betrayal, legal battles, medical trauma, cancer, parenting children with high needs, financial devastation, grief, loss, loneliness. I could go on and on and on. I don’t want today’s episode to be so heavy and to focus on the negative. I want it to really be a beautiful light of hope and redemption.

and restoration, but people are doing a lot of things in silence because they feel unsupported, they feel misunderstood or completely invisible.

Isaiah 43 says, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. That scripture does not say if you will walk through the fire. It says when. God already made plans for the fires. He knew that you’d walk through. And honestly, if you do follow God, if you have a relationship with him,

harder. I wish so many people would be more honest. Following God is not an easy road. is against, it is countercultural. It’s against our society and the way we’ve set it up.

The question becomes how do you survive something that should destroy you? How do you breathe when the world feels heavy on your chest? How do you keep functioning when everything inside you is unraveling? And for me, honestly, every time people ask me like how did you do it? How did you sustain your business? How did you, you know, get through all these things? How are you still standing? I got that a lot. How are you still standing? And every time I pause to think about it, it’s…

because of God. I genuinely do not know how anyone survives anything without God. Not like the Sunday morning version of him, not the cultural version of him. I mean the God who sits with you on the floor. The God who hears your whispers. The God who sees your tears. The God who fights for you behind the scenes. The God who holds you and your things. The God who holds the things your strength cannot. Psalm 18 says,

He reached down from on high and took hold of me. He drew me out of deep waters.

And that’s exactly what he did for me. There was a long season of my life where I could not stand physically. I would get my kids ready for school, barely waking up myself, barely getting them ready. And the second they were out the door, I would just collapse back on the floor. I spent almost a year down there. And that sounds so weird, but it’s literal. I mean, I laid on the floor between here and my kitchen and my dining room. Not…

even capable of crawling, standing, sitting. Not because I wanted to be, but because my soul and my nervous system, my heart, my mind, were all trying to survive what had been done to me. I didn’t want to be there. I never asked for any of the things that came my way. And I think one of my biggest pet peeves in the midst of all of this is when people…

tell me and told me, Jana but you’re allowing these people to get to you. You’ve allowed them to mess with your mental state and to disrupt your nervous system. And that is one of the worst things you can say to someone because when someone has to walk through something traumatic, news of cancer or news of a betrayal or a separation in a relationship that should have been forever.

I mean, there’s so many things so many of us walk and when we say that like our hurt is because we’ve allowed them to hurt us, no, their actions actually do hurt. It is very real. It does not matter how strong you are, how well you know God, it is painful to experience the corruption and the sins of the world and the sins of others. But we weren’t meant to carry their cross.

We were meant to carry our own, I get that. But when you’ve chosen to do relationship with people, whether a business partnership, whether a marriage, and then something unexpected rips that apart, maybe death, that’s one of the hardest things to accept and grasp. It is a new normal.

I had been on the floor because trauma had taken a toll on my body. And trauma rewires you. It exhausts you. It steals your sleep, your appetite, your joy, your clarity. Trauma affects even the strongest people because it’s not about strength, it’s about injury. The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1 that he was ⁓ burdened beyond his ability to endure.

that scripture has comforted me so much because it means even the strongest people in scripture faced situations that broke them. I felt like something was wrong with me and people were treating me that way. The more I had started to be honest and share with people, the more I outcry, the more people looked at me as if I was unwell, as if I had done something and I was the problem. And that hurt.

What hurt the most in my season was not the tasks or the logistics. It was the betrayal, the abandonment, the silence, the lack of support from people who should have been there. The heartbreak that felt like it physically cracked my chest open. Like there were times I thought I might be having heart attacks. I had never experienced a panic attack in my life until this situation. Twice, I laid on the floor.

texting people I thought would be here for me. Hey, I need you. Can you come? And silence. Never to this day to respond.

But you know what? Even in all of that.

I told you all this would be a hard one to get through. But even in the midst of that, God sent me comfort in places I never expected. Through my children, through my animals. As weird as that sounds for so many of you that have animals, you know that’s not weird at all. They are special and they can sense things and they are there for comfort and they love you through everything. They never talk back to you. You know, they think if you…

been gone for 20 seconds that they’ve missed you more than anything in the world and they’re so glad that you’re home and they just can’t live without you. Animals were a godsend. Through nature, gosh nature, through quiet moments that reminded me I was not alone. My boys were very tender. They were actually experiencing a lot of trauma from their previous situations and then current trauma.

And so I had to help them grieve and mourn as well. But you know, when they saw me hurting or crying or maybe I walked away and went to my room and closed the door to just kind of breathe and try not to cry because I knew they were home and I didn’t want them to see that. ⁓

My little guy, he’d go get a little teddy bear and a Kleenex and he’d come back with a face like this. For those of you who are listening in, you gotta go to YouTube because he’d come back with like the pouty face like, I’m so sorry for whatever it is that’s making you sad. And he would take literally my Kleenex and dab my eyes and then hug me and give me a teddy.

My kids sometimes would lay with me on the floor, you know, not truly understanding things and maybe I felt more as a mom, like, oh gosh, like they’re gonna see this, they’re gonna think I’m weak or something’s wrong or they’re gonna think something’s with them is the issue. I didn’t want them to think any of those things, but I did want to be real and vulnerable to show them that.

We’re all real and it’s okay to feel, it’s okay to hurt. God innately wired us to feel certain ways when things happen and that allows us to understand our bodies, to be able to move forward and process and have discernment. But you know, think a lot of times we think, and kids they are, they’re very in tune, very paying attention and they see and they feel.

But also they’re so resilient. They’re way more resilient than adults. They’re way more resilient than we think they are. You know, when my kids would come lay with me on the floor.

They would maybe take a few moments to like look at me and kind of, you know, look sad with me, but then they’d like look up and put their feet in the air and start making silly shadow puppets on the ceiling from the sunlight or, you know, we would just start laughing together and making fun. And God used them to show me that love can be simple and pure. doesn’t have to be big. My dogs and my cat became emotional anchors for me.

Animals don’t judge. They don’t ask questions. They don’t rush you. They just simply show up. And when panic hit, one of my dogs would come lay across my chest like a little weighted blanket for me.

He’s 14, you all. My Floyd, he’s a golden doodle. He’ll probably walk in here now that he hears me talking about him, but he’s always at my feet. I’m surprised he’s not right now. He’s always. If I go to the bathroom, he’ll get up from wherever he is and go walk with me and lay down until I’m done and follow me back. He is my protector. When humans should have been, he filled in every gap.

The Bible says in Philippians that the peace of God surpasses all understanding. And I felt that peace through something as simple as my dog’s heartbeat on me, you know, or him licking me when he knew I needed a kiss. And then nature. Nature is where I meet God all the time. In fact, if my kids are having a rough day or we’re having a hard time regulating ourselves, we simply just go out and sit.

I would lay in my hammock, I would look up, would see the wrestling of the leaves, I would pay attention to the shadows. I started to become in tune with lot more things like textures and little minute details that are so powerful actually.

just hearing the wind blow through my lungs so that I could exist here became such a powerful place for me to sit and sit with God and redirect my focus and recognize my blessings. Me and the kids, we hike a lot, we get outside, we had bonfires, we would go to our special little spot on the lake and we would paddle board and…

and just play in the sand and the dirt and watch the ducks and man when we connect with nature it’s like next level healing. Just like right now I’ve got sun moving through as you can see it’s about to peak on my face and there were times I would wake up it would be so gloomy and I’m solar powered so if it’s gloomy I’m tired my body’s you know it’s gonna be chill if the sun’s out that’s when I want to get stuff done that’s when I’m like

a go-getter and a goal-getter. And so when the sun would hit my face, it would just remind me again of life and blessings.

hearing the birds. You know you’re getting older when you start talking about how much you appreciate the birds,

we put a little bird feeder on the window right here next to me. And that way me and the boys can watch them as they come up and eat. And gosh, we just started to refocus on all of the amazing life around us.

Romans 1 says that God’s invisible qualities are seen in all he created. And I see him in the trees, I see him in the breeze, I see him and I saw him in the silence.

You know, in all of my process, one of the most life-changing sentences spoken to me came from a secretary at an attorney’s office. She said, and I talked about this a little bit in one of my first few episodes, but she said, Jana, sometime you’re gonna have to let your boat sink. You have been punching holes so fast ⁓ and you’re not allowing yourself to reach the bottom. Like the treasure that God has for you could be waiting at the bottom. Just let it sink.

I never realized how scriptural that was until later. Psalms 42 says, deep calls to deep. God meets you in the depths, not the shallows. And I talked about it in that episode, but man, a whole new world opened up for me. The lower we got, new creatures came about, new colors, new life that we had never seen. And honestly, I began to really accept and enjoy the process of letting my boat sink.

It was freeing for me to not have to be constantly patching and fixing and carrying the load for everyone. In fact, I should have just jumped ship. Me and my kids, we should have just jumped overboard, dove straight in and hit the bottom faster. Because when I finally let myself sink, that’s where God met me. He did not expect me to be strong. He did not expect me to be honest. even through EMDR therapy,

Every time I closed my eyes, I did not see trauma. saw Jesus. I saw him standing besides me so often. I had visions of him with me in court, standing next to me as my representative.

I saw us win.

and he turned to me on my left side and just embraced me.

because he had already won. Which means I already won.

In EMDR, you close your eyes and you kind of go back and experience all of the traumatic things that happen to you. You revisit it, you really like feel it, and you release it, and you can look up how that works scientifically. It’s really fascinating. Every single time I was doing this with my therapist, I didn’t see anything else in the world. It was always me on the floor.

and Jesus was right next to me. And every single time, he would just sit there and scoop me into his lap like a parent, and he would just hold me and rock me. And that calmed my breath, my breathing, it calmed my body every time, which took me from like a nine-ten to a zero-one-two. And that’s when I knew, you know, I’m seeking so much support and so much health and so much…

healing through everything, through books, through podcasts. Everybody around me was like, you should listen to this podcast, you should join this group, you should do this and this and this. And what I found is that all of it was adding so much noise that I did the exact opposite. I turned everything off. I never listened to things when I was driving.

I never watched TV, I never read books, I didn’t listen to the podcast, I took the advice, I stuck it in my back pocket, but I knew that none of that was doing any good for me. It was only adding chaos to my soul and my spirit, and what I needed was Jesus.

That was my healing. Not the process, not the protocol, not all the self help. It was his presence.

Whew, y’all this is heavy stuff. You know, but we’re going somewhere, so stay with me. There is another part of my healing that I think will speak to someone listening, so I want to share. I had to accept that I was going to become the villain in a lot of people’s stories. Not because I was wrong, not because I was harmful, but because I began telling the truth and speaking up and speaking out.

I began setting healthy boundaries, I began aligning myself with God’s calling for my life, and that kind of truth always threatens people who are comfortable in life. Always.

And that’s a recovering people pleaser. That was one of the hardest parts. I wanted people to like me. I didn’t want to have tension. I wanted to restore and build and I knew God was the king of restoration and I wanted that. But people didn’t want that and I had to let that go.

I wanted to be understood, I wanted to hear them, I wanted to collaborate and do it together. I’ve always been a team’s person. I’ve always been a people person. I didn’t like to do things alone. I wanted harmony, I wanted to be the helper and the healer, but the moment I stood up for myself, everything changed. God put me on a mission, and a mission to break generational patterns. A mission to protect my children.

A mission to reclaim my voice, one that had spent so many years being silenced. A mission to walk in obedience. And that was the hardest.

Missions come with a cost. They do. It’s like I said earlier, if you want to follow Jesus, if you want to have a relationship with the maker of the universe, God himself, it comes with a cost. Jesus said in Matthew 10 that following him would divide households. That is a hard verse, but it was real in my life and obedience creates separation from things that are not supposed to be there.

So I had to learn how to have the courage to be disliked. That was weird. I had to learn to stop apologizing for walking in truth. I had to release the need to be approved by people who were never meant to understand me. I had to stop clinging to relationships that were not aligned with where God was taking me. People weren’t going with me, and God needed me to go.

You guys, if you can hear anything this entire episode, I want you to hear this next sentence. Rejection is God’s protection. Rejection is God’s protection. That’s a hard one to hear amidst the trauma and the hurt, but months later you’re going to understand it was God protecting you.

I had to learn that with really heavy tears running down my face constantly, daily, for months, for years. But I had to learn at this point if something’s not a hell yes, and you know what, I wanna change this phrase too because people always say hell yes, like it’s cool and motivating. Listen, hell is destructive, hell is hell. I’m gonna start saying heaven yes. If it is not a heaven yes, then it is a hell no.

Half love is not love. Half support is not support. If God removes someone from your life, it is because they cannot go where he’s taking you. They cannot you all. They cannot, nor do some want to. Romans 8 says, if God is for you, who can be against you? God was for me.

and was with me, and he still is. God was ahead of me, he was behind me, besides me. God was protecting me even when people were rejecting me. My people, my immediate people that should have been my support, gone.

There is a song called The Blessing by Kari Jobe and her husband Cory Carnes. Whew, y’all. You know what? I might even put my playlist into these show notes, but my kids and I had a playlist, and we knew when we needed encouragement, when we needed love, when we needed to grieve or cry out to God or just worship, we put on this playlist and we belted it. There is nothing more magical as a mom than driving in my car.

This will get to me, looking in my rear view mirror and seeing my two boys, especially my little one who could barely talk, you know, as a three year old. I mean, he’s talking, of course, but not like worshiping yet. But we don’t understand as adults that kids and animals and nature, they worship too.

My little three year old would be in the back seat. I have photos. I’ll try to find them. He had his hands up and he was just worshiping. I didn’t care how bad he sang. He didn’t care. He didn’t care that anybody could hear him. He just wanted to be with God. And this song, The Blessing

Ugh, I can’t tell you what it did for me and my kids. Let me just breathe through this. There’s nothing more powerful than breath work. Breathing is what sustained me too. As you can see, it’s like scientific. It calms your body down. But let me read a piece of this song that meant so much to us. I’ll make sure to credit them too. And I hope they, I’m sure they get it all the time that people have been saved by these lyrics.

May his favor be upon you and a thousand generations and your family and your children and their children and their children.

May his presence go before you and behind you and besides you. And when we were singing this, we would act it out.

all around you and within you.

He is with you, he is with you in the morning, in the evening, in the coming, in the going, in your weeping and rejoicing, he is for you, he is for you. And she just goes on and on just saying he is for you, he is for you, he is for you, and they repeat those lyrics over and over and over and my boys and I would just continue to belt it and feel it and believe.

That’s powerful, you all. God was protecting me even when people were rejecting me. God was protecting me even when my people were rejecting me. And I want to speak directly to the person listening who has felt like giving up. Like the mom who took her life yesterday or this week. The person who has thought, can’t do this anymore. The person who’s questioned if their life even matters.

I want you to hear me. You are not disposable. You are not replaceable. You are not beyond hope. You’re not too broken, not too far gone. You’re not defined by what happened to you. You’re not defined by what you have done.

Psalm 139 says that God knit you together in your mother’s womb. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. God wrote every one of your days before one of them came to be. You do not get to erase a story that God is still writing.

Listen, you don’t have to leap today. You don’t have to run. Some days you only have to breathe and stay here. I had many of those days, so I can relate. If you want to private message me for more details on that, I will share.

Some days you only have to crawl an inch and God will carry you through the rest. There were days I was on my floor, as I mentioned, I laid there having no idea how am I gonna get through this? What am I going to do? How am I going to keep us afloat? How am I going to get my bills paid? I had a health crisis and still do. And I had children with high needs that needed stability. I had people who were gone.

so much taken from me emotionally, spiritually, financially. There were some days all I could do was take one baby step and that was enough. Crawling, if I had to crawl, I would crawl to the kitchen to put water in my body. If I didn’t have an appetite for days, I knew I at least needed water and God needed to get me there. God’s going to provide. God will carry you through.

Whew.

Psalm 46 says, and I love that I’m putting a lot of scriptures in here, you know, when I started my podcast, God really aligned my mission for loving and serving people with entrepreneurship and then really pushed me into that even more, not only from my podcast having a voice, but protecting people through my Rich Life Alliance brand that I built with my friend Stacey. And I knew God wanted me to talk about, just as people requested to,

how I survived these seasons, how I sustained all of my businesses, how I sustained my mental space, my children, all of our assets, my animals.

And I knew I was gonna talk about that on this podcast. I’ve been restricted to talk about so many things. I have feared sharing a lot of my heart. So I’ve come in and I’ve talked about the systems that sustain me, which they did. Those were blessings in themselves. But the core and the heart behind my podcast and being here is to share with you how God carried me through all of this.

He is the king of all of the things that sustained me and he blessed me with all of the things that sustained me. So today, I’m here to share a whole lot more about God and the Bible and what I’ve connected with and leaned on to get me through. So Psalm 46 says, be still and know that I am God. Some seasons require stillness. Some seasons require surrender.

Some seasons require letting God rebuild you from the inside out, but you are not alone. You are never alone. And this is not your ending. God has big plans for you. And Jeremiah 29 says, those plans are to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope. Me and my boys have shirts that say that. When I first adopted them, Jeremiah 29, 11.

was on our shirt and then later I made myself a necklace with my boys names on both sides and I’m usually wearing it every day. Today is the first day, ironically, that I switched it out but it’s got Jeremiah 29, 11 on it It’s got our adoption day on it as well, the day that all three of us became a family. ⁓

I want to remind you that you’re gonna make it through this. I hated when people told me that. Like, you’re strong, you’re fine, you’re gonna get through it. It was just so nonchalant when I felt just the weight of the world on me, you know? But looking back, it’s true. And I’m here to tell you the same thing. You’re gonna make it through this. You. You’re gonna make it through this. Just like I did.

I have so much more about my story. The pieces I’ve shared here are just the very tip top of the iceberg. So I know that maybe I can’t connect with a lot of you in the way that I would like to yet.

But seriously, send me a private message and I’m willing to share because if I can get through all of the things I’ve been through, I know you can too. You name it. You name what we have been through. Shootings, robbery, theft.

Addictions, affairs, betrayal, entire family groups gone. ⁓ Two traumatic car accidents, a parent falling off of a roof and landing on his head and he should have died. just trauma after trauma. A nephew dying at birth, an in-law dying, multiple in-laws having cancer, multiple friends having cancers, multiple divorces. mean, and then a shooting, a loved one being shot in the head. And at that point, that was when

of the last big things that had happened over a year or two ago, about a year and half ago. I remember telling some loved ones knowing that this is information they needed to know.

We needed people here for this person and for our family and so many people’s responses were, ⁓ sorry to hear that. Like, we’ll pray for you. And I’m thinking, what? This person was just shot in the head. How is that your response? But we had been through so much anytime we told something new to someone,

They just wrote it off as another dramatic thing we had been through. The level of traumatic situations our family went through in about a five year period

was more than most people do in a whole lifetime.

you are going to make it through this. So

I want to encourage you all today, have the courage to be disliked. Speak your truth. God’s given you your voice and your heart.

Stand firm in your healthy boundaries. Seek support. Find people. If you don’t have people, find them. I started posting, who knows where I can find help for this? My kids need help for this. I need help for this. Where can I go? People would refer me. I would reach out to everyone. It takes intentionality, and that’s hard to do when you are grieving and healing and all you want to do is lay there and tune out the world. And that season is okay, too.

I want you to know that no matter what you’re feeling, what step you’re in in the journey, that all of them are okay. You will go through a season of being just angry and pissed off. You know what? God is angry too. God is angry for how people treat people. He’s angry that people left you and hurt you. He’s grieving with you. Get angry, but choose to do it right. Go to a smash room.

take karate classes, pick up boxing. And if you don’t have the energy for that…

Lay on your couch and journal all of your frustrations and then burn it and give it to God.

When you’re in a sad season and all you can do is lay there and cry, do it. I spent hours in the bathtub.

hours a day. When I say hours, I would tell people, just took a three hour bath and they were like, no you didn’t. Yes I did. My kids knew when I went to the bathroom and they heard bath water is leave mom alone time. That is where I met Jesus over and over and over again. It’s where I cried my heart out to him. It’s where I experienced miracles. And you know what? This miracle is worth telling. This is a funny little plug in here. But when

A loved one in my family had fallen off of a roof, landed on his head, flipped over and broke nearly everything in his neck and back. Multiple injuries. Somehow did not have brain injury. Literally a miracle. Not paralyzed, not needing surgery, but intubated in the hospital for 30 plus days. It was also during COVID.

I had another loved one at church who had COVID and he was in the hospital also intubated. Both loved ones of which I could not go visit because of COVID. So I remember standing in the shower completely naked of course thinking God like.

Come on, there were so many times I stood in the shower the first time a decade ago when I said, move mountains.

We’re ready. been praying for this since I was a kid, day in and day out. Now is the time. Start moving the mountains. That’s when all of this decade of hell started. God said, okay, and he knew that needed to happen. He knew we needed to crumble. Anyway, I digress. I say that because so much happened in the shower, and this particular incident when my friend and my family member was in the hospital, I remember telling God, God, you can do the craziest things I’ve seen.

it time and time again. I can’t visit them in the hospital but I want you to put on their heart that I’m there with them. My friend Gary, he was in the hospital and I said, can you let Gary know he’s not alone? Can you have me there somehow so that he feels the presence of a loved one and he knows he’s not alone? And lo and behold,

I go to church a few weeks later, still COVID, our church put together a drive through Santa and hot cocoa experience so that we could still get out and do something with our church family, but you know, have space. And Gary came up to the car and said,

He said, thank you so much for visiting me in the hospital when I was there. And I kind of gave him a face of confusion and I said, well, Gary, I didn’t visit you in the hospital. We weren’t able to because of COVID, I couldn’t go in. And he said, no, you were there. He said, you were standing right by my bed praying over me and praying with me and you were standing right there, I could see you.

And I remember tearing up because I remembered the moment I stood in the shower praying for that.

And then it dawned on me. I was completely nude in the shower. So I said, Gary, what was I wearing? He said, you were in nursing scrubs.

And I said, that is crazy because I was never there but I did pray for you. And I remember telling him, not in that moment, I told him a few weeks later, but I said, I want you to know the miracle that took place and I want you to see the perspective of mine. I was in the shower praying for that and it happened. You saw me, you felt me, you heard my voice in that room and I wasn’t actually there.

But God can do crazy things. Hold onto the hope, hold onto the belief. Know that he is at work even when you can’t see, even when you can’t feel, even when you feel like it’s quiet and you’re alone. You know, here’s one more story.

A lot of us have repetitive either visions or nightmares or dreams, you know, from childhood on that have happened multiple times. A lot of them are shared, like one of mine is where you’re constantly trying to run away from a bad person or somebody who makes bad choices, who’s trying to harm you.

And no matter how fast you run and no matter how many things you climb and how many ways you try to hide, this person’s constantly catching up to you. I feel like a lot of us have those dreams for some reason. Another dream that I had consistently from my childhood until a couple years ago was that I would wake up in the morning, I would come out of my room, and nobody would be in the home.

which is fine, that can be normal sometimes.

But then I would be like, where is everyone? And I would go outside and there was no movement. No cars, no neighbors, no people. So I thought, that’s real strange and a little creepy. Like, where is everyone? So I would always drive to a grocery store first. I don’t know why a grocery store. But I’d walk in and there was no life. No people, no things anywhere. And I stood there like, what is happening? This was not a dream about zombies or any kind of apocalypse.

it was literally my dream of my fears which was being alone. So much of my life was built on teamwork.

I played about eight sports growing up. Everything was team. I was a diehard for partnerships and relationships and friendships and I’m a longevity and loyal kind of person and I wanted to win together and I wanted to fall together. I wanted it always to be together and I remember so many times my friends would say, Jana, you just need some alone time and I said, no I don’t. Why do I want that? Like I’m such a goer and a doer and I thrive off of people. I get my energy from

people, I never wanted to be alone. And if I was alone, it was for my brief quiet time with God, whatever that looked like, prayer, my journaling, maybe under an hour a day, and then I would move on right back to my busyness.

I had a fear of being alone and I didn’t even really understand that until all of this traumatic stuff happened in my life that really made me sit alone and accept that nobody’s here. No one’s coming to save me. Not a single person in my life is coming to my rescue. And they didn’t. But God did.

and God already had. He sent Jesus to die on the cross so that we can be completely free of our sins past, current, future.

I’ve never been alone this whole time. The whole time I thought I’m being stripped of everyone and everything and my jobs weren’t coming in like they were because I was spending a season grieving. There was so much of my life being stripped away. So much of me was having to say no to so many things just so I could function and survive. And my main priority became my children. I needed to create a safe haven. I needed to be a protector.

and I needed to do so much healing work myself so that I could be the best for my kids to ensure that they have the best life possible through all of this. So God stripped it all away.

And a whole lot of my fears came out. I woke up every single day at 3 a.m. for about six months. had nightmares that would wake me up right at 3. It was like clockwork. I would roll over and look at the clock, 2.59. It would roll right into 3. 3 o’clock, roll right into 3.01. I don’t know what it was about that time. I have now learned there’s a lot of powerful things happening at that time. And a lot of people going through trauma wake up at 3 consistently.

I’m not going to talk about that on today’s episode. You can Google it if you’d like. But it was not until I faced my fears, it was not until I all of my healing journey truly accepting what was happening, accepting my new normal, accepting that nothing was in my control.

accepting that one of my best friends in the world started the decade of hell along with another family member by betraying me

It wasn’t until I accepted all of that and the sadness of losing my people but a very small handful. You know, when you go through hardship, you will learn really quickly who your people are.

I am so blessed that God provided those people who have never left and never wavered. But you know, they’re not waking up with you in the morning. They’re not opening up those emails and filling out all those documents or going to those doctor’s appointments. They’re not doing those things day in and day out with you. So it is you and you alone and no one’s coming to save you but God. So once I accepted, it was me and him.

and I leaned into that and I spent time with God and I cried with God and I was mad with God and I talked all damn day to God. Everything I did was me and God and my dog. There’s a reason why God and dog are backwards from each other. Once I accepted it, I sat in my suck.

but not long enough to sulk. I just sat in it, I felt it, I moved through it, and I went and faced my fear. I remember the day I woke up and I said, I’ve got this, I’m not alone. I’ve never been alone this whole time. And I walked out my front door.

It was eerie too. I remember there was no wind, there was no movement. It was very reminiscent and in fact, now that I’m thinking back to it, standing in my front yard felt very visually similar to the dreams, the reoccurring dreams I had for years. Like the visuals were the same. I stood in my yard, I looked around, no neighbors were anywhere in sight. I thought I am alone in this journey. Everyone’s off living their life.

So many family members chose business over family over me. They chose money over support. People wanted out. They just wanted to continue on with their life masking the things that happen behind closed doors and moving about the world as if they’re going through nothing. It was so fake.

I started to see so many people for who they really were. That was a sad thing to grieve. But more importantly, nobody was around, right, wrong, or indifferent. I was alone in my front yard, standing, looking at nothing. And I remember taking a deep breath.

closed my eyes and then I opened them into the sky and I said, you are here. I’ve never been alone. And I had this total refreshing moment. My whole body, my whole spirit changed. It shifted. I felt whole and complete.

Listen, there is no one and no thing, no job, no success, no child of yours, no partner of yours, no spouse. There is no one that can fill a God-sized hole in your heart. No one. And when we seek,

all of those people and those things for our fulfillment, it will only leave us dry and depleted. And that’s what happened with me. It was in that season I realized how codependent I was.

I realized how much I elevated my partner. I realized how much I elevated my family. I realized that I put so much of my hope and my belief and my energy and my excitement and my joy for living into the wrong things. So when I started to shift my perspective and understand…

You know and how sad I always begged God I said, God please I’m the best note taker. Don’t make me have to go through hard things. I will take notes. I will listen and I don’t want to learn the hard way. I’ll just learn by you telling me. And I spent my whole life that way. But there were people I couldn’t reach in that life. There was a voice that I couldn’t even speak in that life. There were things I didn’t understand. There were people I couldn’t see. There were people breathing.

that I didn’t understand.

until I went through all the loss I went through. But what a blessing. When you’re in it, feels like hell, and it is.

It is. I won’t downplay any of it.

but.

God is the King of hope, love, joy, peace, patience, understanding, and He will meet you every single second of every single day along your entire journey. He is the only thing that’s never leaving.

Even if you think a new partnership comes along, or a new kid, or a new pet, and you think, I feel good, this thing’s providing me joy, that thing can disappear in a matter of seconds.

If we continue to put our hope and our purest joy in things of this world, we will never be satisfied. A whole new warrior erupted within me going through this. I had a neighbor, Melissa, who said, Jana,

You know, and she sat with me through so much and they prayed with me and they came over and they helped and they poured so much into me and my boys. I’m forever indebted to them. My friends and my neighbors have been more like family than any family that I’ve had the past five years. And so I call them my family.

And she looked at me one time and said, “Jana, you are going to be able to reach people that none of us can.”

And it’s quotes like that, it’s moments like that that really hit me and became a part of my core memories and I’ve held onto and I’ve remembered and I’ve revisited over and over and over when I’m reminded that my pain had a purpose, my mess has a message, and it will continue to.

And I pray more than anything that God uses every bit of hardship and loss and tear that me and my boys have endured and he turns it for good. I don’t care if three people listen to this episode. God will send the right people to listen. And I want you to know that you are not alone. God has got you.

He will carry you through. He will provide strength when you don’t have any. He sees you. He sees you. He loves you. You are a daughter, a son, that he specifically made for a specific purpose. Please keep putting one baby step in front of the other. Days, weeks, months will seem so hard. Find him.

Run to him. If you can’t run, crawl to him. If you can’t crawl, lay there and cry to him. But find him.

God is what carried me through and he is what will continue to carry me through continued abuse, continued betrayal, and a lot of the acceptance I still have to accept as I rebuild a whole new life for me. But what a beautiful thing to accept.

is being kind of out of it and looking back and thinking again, God’s rejection was his protection. He’s providing new things, better things. He ripped me from a pot that I was stuck within the walls of and he pulled the roots straight out and planted me firmly in the ground of him which is infinite, infinite possibilities, infinite growth, infinite love, an unlimited amount of becoming.

And if I stayed where I was, if I thought that what I had was the best, and if I just continued to be pissed off of the loss of all of that, I would have never stepped into where I am now to be able to have launched this podcast, to be able to speak up and out. I know you guys have a better understanding of what my kids have been through and what they feel because I’ve been through it.

I know now and I can mourn with them. I can have a better understanding. I can have more empathy and grace because I’ve experienced exactly what they have.

I wouldn’t have had that level of understanding had I not been through it. So when you think your yuck is so sucky, and it is, know that God is rewriting your story. He is building you up. is protecting you and pushing you through, and He is providing. There will always be a way if you lean into God. He will provide every step of the way.

to end this podcast, God is not a vending machine. This is one thing I want to make clear. So much of our American culture has said, you know, you ask for God and if you believe it enough, then he’s gonna bless it. He’s gonna provide you with exactly that. You know what, if God blesses us with everything that we ask for, it goes back to the

Garth Brooks lyrics from the song Unanswered Prayers. It literally says some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. So instead of praying specifically

Go to God and say, how am I gonna make it? Where do you need me to go? Who do you need me to fight for? Where do I speak up and when and how? Send me. Get me through, carry me through. I will go where you need me to go.

and He will provide those answers. If I’m begging for a relationship to be sustained that God wanted to close that chapter in your life to project you into something so much better, safer, more loving, but we’re praying to keep what’s harmful for us, that’s not gonna get us to where we need to go. It’s so hard to accept.

There were times I didn’t know how to make ends meet with bills. I was paying about four or five times the amount of income I was making out the door to people who didn’t deserve it. People who weren’t safe for me. I got stuck in systems, yucky systems of things. ⁓

where people weren’t actually doing their jobs. They weren’t protecting me and my children. And now I’m experiencing a whole other level of hurt and harm. And I was depleted of my entire retirement savings,

everything I had money-wise and then I was robbed and I thought you’ve got to be kidding me. You’ve got to be kidding me.

I remember sitting there thinking, I don’t know how I’m going to pay this $7,000 bill that has to be paid this month. What am I going to do? Like, God help. And the very next day, I had a client book me and their project was exactly that amount that I needed. And I thought, this is a joke, right? And the people who believe in coincidences, I challenge you to not. Because I don’t.

There’s

nothing in the world that can make sense of God and his miracles and his providing it in his divine alignment. And I have experienced so many of those situations. It’s unreal. That was one of them. Another one, a few weeks ago, I sat here and I’m just like, have a health crisis that’s been going on. I have tried to put off through this very traumatic situation I’ve been in so that I can get through one thing to go to the next. But because of all of the anxiety,

stress, the sleepless nights, it’s skyrocketed my health. So now it’s urgent that I have some medical things I need to tend to. And on top of that I have all of these bills still to close out and slam shut, to slam shut a book that is done. I’m putting it down.

I’m moving on to a newer, better book, but there’s so much financial stress that comes with that. I remember sitting right here on my table thinking, how am going to do this? I need like these thousands of dollars to pay this off. I need these thousands to pay this off, and I need these thousands to keep my lights on. And I remember just sitting there and being like, God always provides.

Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. That’s one of my favorite quotes and it’s so true. I was like, I’m not gonna worry. God will provide. I still have to implement action and prayer and discipline, but God will provide. And I’m not kidding you. If I could find my home footage from this, I received four or five projects that day.

one of the bills I needed to close out this book.

those projects came in and equaled exactly that number again. And I just thought like, you’ve got to be kidding me, right? Like, this can’t be again. I mean, but it can. Once you are aware and you’re able to pay attention to the blessings that God is doing in your life day in and day out, you can’t unsee it. They’re everywhere. And I knew, I was so overjoyed. I’m like, God, thank you. There’s nothing that can explain that. ⁓

And then I got three more projects that came in and I’m thinking, oh good, now I have cushion money. I’m not at zero, I have cushion. And then I remember, oh my gosh, I had this bill over here that’s exactly this amount of money that these three projects just brought in. And I’m mind blown again. And I just remember, hands up.

Like my tears came. I couldn’t believe it. I could believe it, but I couldn’t, you know? I was just like, here we are again. God brought me exactly the amount of money I need. That’s an unreal amount of money that I haven’t made in months, and it all came in one day because I needed that that day. There’s nothing that can explain that, but God, y’all are crazy if you believe in coincidences. I do not. God, here’s your heart. He cares for you.

and he’s going to make lemonade out of lemons. People here on earth are the destructors. They’re the imperfect ones, the sinners, the ones that we have free will, we make all these choices, and we, as loved ones, friends, nearby, have to reap the repercussions of those actions, but that does not mean that we need to carry it.

At a certain point, have to understand people’s patterns are who they are. Mistakes are one thing. If you didn’t watch my episode on the Hidden Signs of Abuse with Misty, I would encourage you to go back and watch that. All of us are imperfect. We’re gonna mess up. So accepting that your business is imperfect, you’re imperfect as a parent, as a partner, as a friend, but patterns, repeated patterns, especially of abuse.

Underlying abuse? Let that go.

Lean into what God’s doing in your life. Lean in. If someone told me that during all of my hard stuff, maybe I would have wanted to punch them in the face too, but lean in. God’s taking you somewhere and he’s gonna turn your pain into purpose.

Okay, to close out, I’m going to pray for all of you listening in. The sun is going to beam on my face here. I’m going to scoot closer. I love it. This is God speaking right through me to you and I hope you hear Him today. ⁓

God, I lift up every person who is listening right now, every person who feels overwhelmed, every person who feels broken, who feels unseen or unsupported, every person caring more than they know how to hold. I get that feeling. It’s not pretty.

Your word says that you are close to the brokenhearted and be close to them now. Your word says that you give strength to the weary, strengthen them now. Your word says that when we pass through deep waters you are with us, walk with them now.

Cover their homes with your peace. Cover their children with your protection. Calm their anxious thoughts. Heal their trauma. Restore their identity. Restore their bodies, their mind, their spirit. Remind them that they are loved, that they are chosen. Remind them they’re not alone. Surround them with people. Bless them with people who speak truth and life and believe them.

Remove anyone who is not meant to stay. That’s the hardest piece. And then be there with them when they have to accept all of that and move through it. Give them courage to be disliked. Give them courage to walk in obedience. Give them clarity for their next step. And God, if anyone listening has felt tempted to give up, breathe your life.

Breathe your life into them right now. Let them feel your presence. Let them feel your comfort and your hope and rise them again. Jesus, thank you for saving us. Thank you for carrying us. Thank you for meeting us on the floor. Thank you for never leaving us, not once. Thank you for being the one that’s come to save us when no one else will.

We love you. I’m thankful for today and tomorrow. Thank you for turning our mess into our message and I pray that this reaches the masses. Amen.

Okay everyone, I know that was a lot today. ⁓

I just want you to know I feel you. I’ve been there.

and there is so much beauty ahead. Your businesses will rebuild, your life will rebuild. As ugly as your circumstances look, trust him and fight. You’ve got this. I love you and until next time.