Denise: Hey everybody, I have a very special guest on today. One of you, one of the members of the weightloss with the Holy Spirit community. Jen, she is here and she’s going to talk about many things, but in particular how she has actually been released from not feeling so great in her body. In fact, she can actually say, not only does she feel comfortable in her body, but Jen, it’s fair to say that you actually love yourself. 

Jen: That’s true.

Jen: Thank you for having me, Denise. This is such a privilege. It’s such a privilege just to be able to share my heart and what God has done for me through this program.

Denise: Yeah. When the Lord has just changed your life so much. And taking you out of what feels like this emotional prison. You just wanna tell like the whole world.

Jen: Yeah.

Denise: And I remember when I first started to notice my life really changing. It was hard for me to have everyday conversations with people. Because this is all I wanted to talk about. I was like, really? We’re talking about stupid stuff again. Which I think is the benefit of our communities because we get to. We all get it and we’re like, let’s talk about it more.

I’ll praise to him and all of you. When you hear Jen’s story, you are going to just know that it’s the Lord’s might working in her life. You’ll see the Holy Spirit sparkled all over it. So, Jen, tell us a little bit about you, your life and how you found weight loss with the Holy Spirit.

Jen: Okay. I am from North Dakota, so I’m in a very little town in North Dakota. My husband and I are small grain farmers. We adopted a sibling, group of three children. In 2014, we struggled with infertility. Our whole marriage had one miscarriage.

But God blessed us with three children. They’re now 20, 18, and 15. And through all this, I struggled really hard with body image, with my weight but God has healed all of that through this program.

Denise: Just to do the math on that for just a minute. ’cause both my boys are adopted as well. How old were the kids when you adopted them?

Jen: Six, four and one.

Denise: Oh my gosh. Okay. If you are not an adopted mother, then I just want you to imagine that you have no kids and then the next day you have a six, four, and 1-year-old and all at once.

Jen: All at once.

Denise: And I say this as an adopted mom oh my gosh, that’s like the Super Bowl of being an adopted mom. You know, my boys were adopted one at a time and they were 18 months, which is, like that whole concept of you don’t have a child and then you do, and they’re 18 months old.

And I remember, before I knew I wanted to adopt thinking that adoptive parents were like saints and like I just couldn’t be that good of a person. And I realize that’s not true now. ’cause you know, we’re just normal people that have been called to this.

But Jen, I really am just like, so. If somebody would’ve said, do you want a sibling group? I think I could. I don’t think I would’ve said yes. I think I would’ve been like, I don’t think I could handle that. So I’m kind of curious, like, what made you say yes

Jen: God? Because I didn’t wanna do foster care because my heart, I’m like, I can’t love a child in a, give it back.

Denise: Yeah.

Jen: I can’t do that. And so we went through the adoption stuff and they’re like, maybe you should do foster care. So you know what these kids are like coming from the foster care. And so we are like, okay, so we did, and they’re like, Hey, here you go. And we didn’t even, it didn’t even cross our minds to say, no, it didn’t. Okay.

Denise: Wow. You were like, that was an option. I mean, because there’s a point where you just couldn’t imagine they’re in your home and it’s, the thought doesn’t cross your mind. Okay. That answered my question then. Okay. So tell me how you found weight loss with the Holy Spirit. How did you come into this work?

Jen: Okay. I was going to a naturopath and we were talking about how the stress I was having with all the, with the kids and being able to bring my cortisol levels down because they were higher. And she’s like, well, have you heard of Made For Greatness? I’m like, Nope. She’s like, I think you should look into that.

So that’s where I started. I went with Made for Greatness and was listening to Sterling’s. Her coaching calls. And then there was a little nudge in my heart saying, maybe you should look into. I’ve always wanted do weight, lose weight. But I didn’t want another diet plan. I was done with dieting and I was so frustrated.

Denise: Yeah.

Jen: And I kept seeing your program, weight loss with the Holy Spirit. Yeah. But I don’t wanna lose weight. I don’t want to. ’cause I thought at the time it was a diet plan again.

Denise: Yeah.

Jen: And I’m like, I don’t wanna do that. That’s not what I wanna do. I wanna love myself first. I wanna be there. And but it kept nudging, maybe you should do one-on-one coaching. And it was just, your story just pulled me in. And that’s how I chose doing one-on-one coaching with you.

Denise: Okay, so for all of you who Dunno, made for Greatness. Made For Greatness is a Catholic, well they are now called Catholic Mom Calm, but before they were a and they still are a Catholic coaching for moms. And I’m curious, was your naturopath path Catholic?

Jen: Yes.

Denise: Okay, so she knew the work.

Jen: Yep. She was Catholic and she had went through one-on-one coaching.

Denise: Oh yeah. I mean, man, it is just so powerful. I love one-on-one coaching because you get to see, oh my gosh, that’s in my brain. Oh, that’s actually the problem. Yeah, it is. Very interesting.

Okay, so you got into weight loss with the Holy Spirit. That we are not a meal plan, that we are really just about truly aligning the way that you eat and talk to yourself and care for yourself. To the way that the Lord wants you to do that. It’s just living in his will all the time.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: And I find that so many of us don’t recognize that it’s the way that we relate to food and the way that we’re talking to ourselves that are pushing us out of his will. And so if we can align that area with his will, then so many other things fall in place as well. And we’ll get to that.

Jen: Yes.

Denise: So tell me about your relationship with yourself and your body. What was it like before joining weight loss with the Holy Spirit?

Jen: My relationship with myself was not very good. I would look in the mirror and I would see all those ugly rolls, fat thighs, double chin, and I just despised myself. I did not like it, and I would call myself names. I just thought I looked disgusting. I’d pick myself apart. I would get on the scale. Then that would. Make me in a bad mood, which then made me take it out on my family.

Because I was just, and it was a whole day thing. It wasn’t just in the moment mad. It was a whole day of not liking myself and being not me to my family of what they wanted. I couldn’t even tell myself that I liked me.

And you know that bible verse that says, love your neighbor as yourself. I would always ask God, how do I love my neighbor as myself when I don’t even love me? So how do I do that? And so that’s where I was before I got into the into the weight loss. Holy Spirit.

Denise: Yeah. And I think a lot of women can relate to that. Do you remember how you would talk to yourself or the things that you would say?

Jen: Oh yeah. It would be like, oh yeah, look at that roll. Look at how fat that is. Look at the cellulite bubbles on your butt or your thighs. That’s just so gross. That’s disgusting. How can anyone like that, but yeah, my love, my husband loved me, he loved me the way I was and he never said those things, but I said those things. And so it’s just yeah.

Denise: Yeah, and I know a lot of women can relate to that. So when did you start feeling that desire for something different? When you said oh my gosh, I don’t wanna keep living that way. You’d mentioned that and this may have been actually after you’ve been in the weight loss with the Holy Spirit program for a while, so what was it that you said? I just don’t wanna talk to myself this way anymore.

Jen: Actually, it was before I even did Made For Greatness. I just had this thought in my head was like, this isn’t right. I want to love me more than the weight itself. I didn’t want to judge others by their appearance because then what I was doing was comparing myself to them. I didn’t wanna do that anymore, but I didn’t know how to stop it.

I didn’t even think about wanting to lose weight at that time. It was like, I need to love me, but how do I do that? I didn’t know how to do that. Right at that time it was the same time, the naturopath sent me to, Made for greatness or Catholic calm mom, and it was just a continuing nudging of my heart that God said, Hey, you need to reach out. And that’s when I reached out to you for one-on-one coaching.

Denise: Oh, that’s cool. You just kept feeling like a little nudge. Isn’t he funny like that? He’ll do that. He’ll just keep tapping you on the shoulder. And I think when you walk so closely with the Lord, there’s a point where it is just undeniable where you recognize that you’re scared to do it, but it’s what he wants. But it’s like with the kids where you’re not willing to say no.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: So once you decided you entered into Made For Greatness, you started one-on-one coaching, what did it look like to begin that relationship with your body? What sort of prayers or mindsets or, in a practical way, what were you doing to heal that?

Jen: What else? First started with our one-on-one coaching and we didn’t even discuss weight at that time. It was more of. You matter and you have choices. And those have been my mantras for a long time. You matter and you have a choice. And when you first said that to me, I’m like, what I do, I had no clue that was even possible.

It wasn’t until the end of that where we touched on weight, but it was more so trying to love me. And then going into group coaching more and more. It wasn’t until you came up with that mini course called Letting Yourself Love Your Body.

Denise: Yeah.

Jen: And I was one of your beta testers.

Denise: Yep.

Jen: I did the course, and then you and I had a coaching call on that, not on my hangups. I don’t remember what the hangups were, but they were there. The course has, you start where you are, which you have always taught is, start where you are. I was at, I have a body.

Denise: Yeah.

Jen: And that’s all I could say because I didn’t, if you told me. love yourself because you’re a daughter of God. I was like, what does that mean? That doesn’t, yeah. It didn’t hit in the heart. I didn’t know what that.. Sure, yeah. Daughter of God, I’m, oh, I know. I believe in him. But what does that mean for loving myself?

I just knew God loved me. I had a great relationship with him and our blessed mother. I just didn’t have that great relationship with myself. So again, all I could say was I have a body. And what really made that healing happen or blossom was an experience I had this summer with my dad. If you don’t remember that coaching call we had about this horse that I needed training.

Denise: Yes, but do tell for our audience.

Jen: Okay. So I have this two and a half year old horse that I was gonna try to train. I’ve had him since four months and I just couldn’t get anywhere with him. And so I finally said to him to my dad, I think I’m gonna just sell him. My dad made the comment, oh, he’s such a beautiful horse. You don’t wanna sell him.

That sent my brain into tornado thinking because my wound is coming from my dad. And trying to get his approval. And so that was a hard thing for me to do. But we went through this coaching and you’re like, you know what you want. I’m like, yes I do. I wanna sell this horse. I want, he’s not a good fit.

After that call, my dad calls me up and says, Hey, can I come work with that horse? Okay, this one time you can come work with this horse. And so he came up. He hadn’t told me prior that he was having some health issues.

But anyhow, he worked with this horse all day long. I had to leave for a little bit because I had something else that come up and when I came back, he had this horse doing things I could never do, and I was mad, I was angry. I was frustrated because I was like, what did you do?

He’s never worked with horses. Like that. We grew up having horses, but he’s never done that before. That was the first time, and I was just mad because I couldn’t do it. He came up and he did it, and I’m like, oh.

After a while we had to quit because he wasn’t feeling good and whatnot, and he went home and a week later I went out and I tried the things that he told me to do and everything, and I couldn’t do it. I was frustrated, so I just. I quit, put the horse away. I’m like, I need to call my dad.

So I called up my dad and he happened to have been just resting and we started talking and then he said I said what if I don’t want to do this? He goes that’s your decision. I’m like, yeah. Okay. And so we talked a little bit more and he goes, can I pray for you or pray for us, for his health. ’cause finding out it was his blood pressure was causing his problems.

So he prayed for guidance on what to do with this horse. Maybe find one that I can ride and I can enjoy because for me that’s my self care. I love riding horse. And so he ended praying the prayer with thanking God for me. My family and how much he loved me.

Denise, this meant so much to me. Oh my gosh. Because I have always felt like his, I love yous or his hugs were so fake to me, and when he said that, and he said, I love you. And it was felt so real that I was like, oh my gosh, my dad loves me, but my daddy loves me. And I just bawled. I’m like, my daddy loves me.

And after a few weeks after that, I looked in the mirror and realized, I’m like, Hey, I don’t hate myself. I don’t despise what I look like. I can stand here and look at myself. Before shower and say, yeah, see there you’re, and that’s been just such a blessing for me not to have those thoughts run through my mind anymore. Satan still likes to put ’em in there and I’m like, Hey, we’re not going there. But yeah.

Denise: Jen. Oh my gosh. So I wanna recap a little bit of that. That is such a beautiful story and what it feels like is just this beautiful journey that the Lord is taking you on. And he said he allowed you to start that course, right? The letting yourself love your body and just start where you were.

So it’s like you started to take the first steps. You did that for you. He let. You make that decision for you because you matter, you have choices, and you knew on some level you had to partner with him. To move forward. And I believe what I see is that you started that course and recognize my baseline is I have a body. Okay. It’s way better than I hate my body.

Okay. So we’re taking steps forward and it almost seems like that wiggled enough and unblocked you enough that what your father did for you, your earthly father, you were actually able to receive. And a really profound and true way. And the Lord came in and just really miraculously healed you.

Jen: Yes. And it wasn’t overnight. I did the one-on-one coaching with you. I started that back in 2022. You start, did this program with either 23 or 24 or something like that. And it was just this fall where it, this all healing came. So it wasn’t an overnight thing at all.

Denise: No, it wasn’t an overnight thing. But I think what you’re showing women is the benefit of just starting.

Jen: Yeah.

Denise: To know they matter. Like you just said in number two, that they have a choice and they don’t have to live in the pain that they’re in, and they can just take a step forward and a step forward can feel as unexciting as I have a body, but it is a step forward. And here’s what I love to tell people. Okay. Jen, how old are you?

Jen: 48.

Denise: Okay. So you’re 48. Oh, me too. All right, so you’re 48. I’m 48. And I always say, let’s pretend like we live till we’re 95. So it’s never too late to start. So you and I. You now have, let’s do the math really quick. 95 minus 48 is something like 47 maybe.

Jen: Yeah, something like that.

Denise: You still have 47 more years, like almost half of your life to now. Not live. To live. Sorry. To live. Not hating your body.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: That feels miraculous.

Jen: Yes.

Denise: That feels worth the four or five years of work to get here. That’s just you guys, everyone listening to this, whatever situation you find yourself in, hating your body, feeling like your body is horrible, hating your weight, all of that shenanigans, you just matter and you have a choice and you do not have to live the way you’re living.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: Because the Lord doesn’t want you living that way. And if you can just lock arms with him and start looking toward him and taking one step forward, he’ll do the rest.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: And it feels like that Jen, doesn’t it? It feels like you took, kept taking steps forward and then it was just like, whoosh.

Jen: Yeah, and I didn’t even know that was happening. You know, when I was going through that experience, it was afterwards, and I’m like, I don’t hate myself no more. I don’t hate the way I look.

Denise: Gosh, that just feels so light. It sounds so freeing. Wow. Okay. So you don’t hate yourself anymore. So tell me what your experience with yourself and your body is now. I know it feels lighter and freer, but when do you really notice it and how are you talking to yourself now?

Jen: I notice it more, of course, when you’re getting ready for a shower or you’re changing your clothes that’s when I can look in the mirror and I can say I’m not disgusted, I don’t have to sit there and pick myself apart and just, you’re there, you’re beautiful. And I can say all those things now, I can weigh myself and not make it mean anything.

Denise: Wow.

Jen: You know, it’s just a number on the scale. Or if I go to the doctors, I’m like, don’t tell me. I don’t need to know. That’s not my identity anymore. I can move on with my day. You know, Satan, him and his little lies, they like to like knock on there and I’m like, Nope, that’s not happening anymore. I’m not doing that.

If something doesn’t feel right, you know, like a piece of clothing. That’s just not for me. And I find something else that looks good on me and feels good on me and I’m comfortable in it. It’s one thing about the healing is, I haven’t lost any of the weight, but I’ve gained so much more in loving myself through this whole program.

God has just been working on healing my self image. Finding the joy in food again, ’cause I was restricting it so much, trying to lose weight doing this diet, that diet. I was just so tired of that. But now I can just, I can eat what my family eats. I was making two meals and just, that’s just. Painful. It’s so painful. But just having that joy in eating the foods I love again, has been amazing. He has now given me a new area to heal, and I’m excited to see where that leads me.

Denise: Oh, what’s that? Can you tell?

Jen: It has more to go deeper into loving myself. But being able to tell people my opinions and not have that fear of rejection.

Denise: Yeah. Oh, that’s so great. That is yes. Jed, I remember when you first, when I started working with you, first was just your big bag of food rules. The big bag of food rules and the combining the foods and to put those rules down and now to be freed of the burden of hating your body and next to be freed. To speak just your truth.

Jen: Being true to myself.

Denise: Being true to yourself. Yes. What a freedom. And you said, that you mentioned that you haven’t lost weight. And for the person listening to this, they can think, oh, weight loss with the Holy Spirit’s all about weight loss. Listen, I believe that you’ll be at your healthy weight if you’re not at your healthy weight because you’re not surrendering some area of your life.

And to my point is, Jen, and you and I have coached on this, how do you know you’re not at your healthy weight? And when you surrender, like, oh wait, I’m just gonna take care of myself. And eat in a way that’s peaceful. Yeah. That’s called your healthy weight.

Jen: Yeah. I haven’t lost weight, but I haven’t gained weight either, so I’ve stayed the same all three years.

Denise: And you haven’t gained weight eating foods that you love that aren’t restrictive and you aren’t in deprivation. That isn’t that incredible. So you’re just enjoying life?

Jen: I am.

Denise: With less food drama.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: And I also like how you said the devil comes in, like the little minions come in, but they’re not coming in, like you’re not believing the lies. You see them. And they’re like almost like little whispers instead of huge truths.

Jen: They come in a little like you said, minion instead of the lion.

Denise: Yeah.

Jen: That used to come in.

Denise: And there’s two things that I think many women who are listening to this would want freedom from. You said, I can step on a scale and not make it mean anything. How is that possible?

Jen: God and his healing and surrendering it to him, surrendering my way to him, saying, this is what it is, and Okay. I can feel okay.

Denise: Yeah. You said you don’t find your worth in that. That’s just incredible.

Jen: It’s not my identity.

Denise: Yes.

Jen: It used to be. Not anymore.

Denise: You also said that you can put on clothes that don’t feel right or look right and you just take ’em off and put something else on.

Jen: Yep. Remember when I was trying to find jeans?

Denise: Yes.

Jen: I’m still going. I went back to the ones that I’ve always felt comfortable in. I put some new ones on and I’m like. I’ll go back to what I had.

Denise: Yeah. It’s just not the clothes for you. But you’re not making it mean that you have a wrong body.

Jen: No.

Denise: The clothes are the wrong thing for today.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: Not the body. Wow. And for those of you who are seeing the video version of this and seeing this on YouTube, you see how Jen has been beaming from the very beginning. And when we first came on, I just was asking, Hey, Jen, do you have any questions before we get started? And she’s I’m just, and I was like, you’re beaming. You literally are beaming.

And she said, yeah, because when you have, when the Lord’s done in your life, what he’s done for me. You said it’s just you wanna tell everybody. And so for the woman who’s listening, who still feels unworthy or hates her body, what do you want her to know from your story? What hope, encouragement

Jen: It takes time. It’s not gonna happen overnight. Give yourself grace. When you seem to falter, when you happen to have that day where you like I was so good today or yesterday, but today, you know, I feel give yourself grace.

The Lord is walking right there with you. Even though you may feel alone, he’s right there walking with you. We don’t get here overnight, so it’s hard to expect that it’s gonna be overnight type thing. ’cause our brain wants to think that. If you’re, where I was thinking that what does a daughter of God even mean? Keep asking him. ’cause that’s what I did.

He will show you what it means to you. This program is more than just weight loss. It’s about opening your heart to him and allowing him to lead you where he wants you to go, and what he feels is more important for you.

Denise: That’s so good. That’s so good. What he wants for you. Because we have our human ideas.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: Okay, so going back to your human ideas for why you started, did he give you more than you expected?

Jen: I didn’t know what to expect. I just thought. I’ll just love myself, but it’s more than that. It’s more, again, trying to be more true to myself and being able to be in the crowd and not feel like you have to be in the corner because you don’t like the way you look.

Denise: Gosh, she’s just letting you live.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: He’s letting the world experience you.

Jen: Yeah.

Denise: And the other piece that I want women to hear is how you said that. So this work is very layered and that he’ll just keep taking you deeper and deeper and deeper. And he’ll, and you don’t have to guess, he’ll make it very obvious what he wants for you to heal from. And like you said, the next thing that he wants to take you deeper on is being true to yourself and not being afraid to share your opinion.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: And you know, for the woman who’s listening, how did you know that’s what he wanted for you?

Jen: Well, it’s only probably been about a couple weeks. I did a coaching call with you about my kids fighting and Thanksgiving coming up. And what am I going to do? ‘Cause it, their fighting always felt so intense and we coached on it. And later on I prayed about it and God’s like, you know, you have a fear of rejection. Let’s work on being more true to yourself.

And I really thought, why does yelling trigger me? Why does people strong emotions trigger me so bad? It’s because I wanna be liked by others and not to be rejected because rejected hurts. And so he’s like, that’s where we need to work. Is that not being afraid of being rejected of being said no, or I always that fear of being called a name or disliked is strong. So he wants me to work on that.

Denise: When you said coaching. See, okay, number one, he is so faithful, right? He’s like, okay, and this is your work next. And he reveals things when you’re ready to hear them. And when you just said coaching, you and I haven’t done one-on-one coaching for a couple years now.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: And so that is part of when women come into this program that we have weekly coaching and you can raise your hand. So I just want people to know that you don’t have to have your one-on-one coach to get help. What the Lord does through this work is he constantly says, Hey, this is what’s standing in the way of you feeling peace and joy. I wanna remove that. Let’s work on it.

Jen: Yep. And my little brain still wants to say, Hey, you gotta lose weight. But also it’s like, no, you gotta love yourself first. You gotta do this first. And sometimes you wanna still get into that comparison mode.

She lost weight in the, 63 surrendered. They lost 10 pounds. You haven’t lost anything. So my little brain wants to compare, so I have to combat that and said, no, this is our road. This is my lane. I need to stay in it.

Denise: This is your journey. It’s specific for you. Yeah. That’s just so interesting. You know, we call it weight loss of the Holy Spirit, because the truth is, that many people are holding onto extra weight because. They don’t know how to care for themselves. So what we want is you to learn the skills on how to care for yourself.

And for some people, that is what was holding on extra weight. And for some people, perhaps they aren’t holding extra weight, it’s more spiritual and emotional weight, and your body is physically well. It’s just our world standards feel like, I want to be 10 pounds later. I’ll give you an example.

I have a woman in our breakthrough program, and that’s our, you know, like more our breakthrough program is, has a weight loss guarantee. Anyway, to make a long story short, she wanted to lose like 20 pounds or something, and once I got her weight and her body fat, I was like, oh my gosh, it is not healthy for you to lose more than 10 pounds.

Jen: Oh, wow.

Denise: And, but my point is that our brains are just so skewed because we believe a certain number or we just spent our whole lives thinking 10 or 15 pounds or 20 or 30, or whatever the number is. You’ve probably spent decades thinking that,

Jen: Oh yeah, well, society and doctors don’t help you in that. They feed the lie instead of the truth.

Denise: We’re not saying that there isn’t some medical necessity at times to lose weight.

Jen: But when they tell you at 15 years old that you need to lose weight, you know what that does to a 15-year-old boy?

Denise: That’s right. And that’s the story that I hear more than I care to hear, is that kids in their most formative years, 12 to 15 years old, you know, being put on diets. Instead of really saying, Hey, what’s cooking underneath there? Do you need some help? Is this just your body? You know why? Yeah. Making it a big deal. And I love that this work is a place to help heal that.

Jen: Yep.

Denise: Yeah. Well, Jen, I just so appreciate you sharing your story and what the Lord has done in your life. Is there anything else you want to share?

Jen: Nope, we Got it all.

Denise: Okay. Well, thank you so much for being here. It’s been such a pleasure to have your story and I appreciate you raising your hand and having the courage to share it.

Jen: Well, you’re welcome. It’s my privilege to share.