What has God called you to? Do you ever feel like you’re not equipped for the plans and dreams that are in your heart and mind? Brittany Jones was diagnosed with bipolar disorder before planting a church with her husband. As a leader and pastor, she wanted to authentically lead by being honest about her personal testimony. She has worked hard to overcome the lies that her mental illness prevents her from sharing the strength and provision that God has brought into her life. For this God Hears Her conversation, join host Elisa Morgan in this special one-on-one conversation about leading honestly and authentically.
God Hears Her Podcast
Episode 180 – Authentic Leading with Brittany Jones
Elisa Morgan, Eryn Adkins & Vivian Mabuni with Brittany Jones
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Brittany: And I almost feel like sometimes people think that we’re taking away from God when we say, hey, I have this illness and I’m taking medication. I’m actually not taking away from Him, God’s using these amazing, brilliant psychiatrists and therapists who can help us walk out this thing together.
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Eryn: You’re listening to God Hears Her, a podcast for women where we explore the stunning truth that God hears you. Join our community of encouraging one another and learning to lean on God through Scripture, story, and conversation at godhearsher.org. God hears her. Seek and she will find.
Elisa: Before we get into this episode, I wanted to let you know that this episode will mention some more mature topics like sexual abuse and mental health struggles. So, please be mindful before listening to this episode. I’m doing a solo gig today because my buddies, Viv and Eryn, are not here today, but I’m kind of… well, this is awful to say, but I’m kind of glad because I get to have our guest all to myself. And that makes me super happy. So, I’m going to talk to Brittany Jones, and Brittany is a wife, a mom of two beautiful girls and a goldendoodle…
Brittany: A goldendoodle.
Elisa: … named Juno. And she and her family live in Virginia where they… she and her husband planted and co-pastor Motivation Church. We’re going to be talking about… some kind of tough and yet beautiful things today. Welcome, Brittany.
Brittany: Oh, man. I am so honored to be a part of this today. Thank you so much.
Elisa: Absolutely, yeah. And as I’ve been just getting to know you a little bit, I’m very struck by how… and God knows this, how your life and the life lessons that God has really redeemed in you are going to minister to those who are listening today, me included, me included. So… tell me just as we get started and we dive into getting to know you, because the background of who we are is such a beautiful context, always, for understanding how God has worked in us. You know, what was your childhood like? Where’d you grow up? How did it look?
Brittany: Absolutely. Well, I grew up in the Chicagoland area. So, my family… we were from the South side of Chicago, and I grew up in a dysfunctional home. So, I grew up in a home where my mother and my father wrestled with drug addiction pretty much most of my life, my father actually passed away when I was four years old. And so, I grew up with a single mom who wrestled a little bit just because of her own grief, and pain, and all of those things. But in the midst of all of that, from the age of five until I was fifteen, I was abused sexually. And so, that turned my life a little bit and the trust that I could have in people and adults around me. And so, I’ve wrestled with that most of my life, as… it’s obvious, you know, when you wrestle with trauma, I mean, it just trickles into every area of your life…
Elisa: Oh gosh, yeah.
Brittany: … and we had moved around a ton, and so, because of the environments that we grew up in, it was a lot of poverty, gang violence. We moved around a ton and I found a church that was right across the street from my home, and that is kind of where we landed. for a season. I think that’s where I… I experienced just a different level of who God is for me. Even in the midst of all of the… the trauma, in the midst of what my family was walking through, there was just kind of a bright spot that I had no idea was waiting for me.
Elisa: Brittany, you’re just like raising the curtain just in one big yank. And… and I… you have so much courage in doing that, and I know you’ve been doing your work for a good while now. I know there are probably some listening who were just peering into the deep caverns of struggles and wounds that they’ve had. Can you share some of what were the messages that you think you absorbed in those early years? You know, zero to four, you have two drug addicted parents, your dad dies when you’re four. And then you… shared about sexual abuse beginning around there. And then you jump till ten and this amazing, amazing work of God to rescue you, begin that rescue. But in that season, you know, zero to ten, what kinds of messages were planted in your heart? What kinds of weeds were… were really attacking you in those years?
Brittany: Yeah, I had… I was just telling a friend about this the other day. I remember growing up where I would hear all the time, do as I say, not as I do from the adults around me. And so, the message that I constantly would hear in my heart and in my mind, because it was being said to me often was I had to listen to the adults around me. So, when it came to the abuse, these were the people that were telling me what to do, so I had to do it. And so, it just kind of ingrained in me this idea of following the rules at all times, even though they weren’t necessarily rules, it’s… it’s what was created in me. Then I go… I went through a season where I didn’t know who to trust, what to trust, but I just knew I had to do what I had to do with the people around me. So, that was kind of those things. And then obviously with the trauma you just started to believe that you are not worth anything…
Elisa: Yeah, yeah.
Brittany: … that I’m unworthy. I’m unworthy… for love from the people around me. And surely, because I didn’t know God in between that time until I was ten, I really didn’t know that there’s anybody in the world that really valued me because value to me was, hey, I’m taking from you. And so… when I gave my heart to Jesus, it transformed this idea that I could believe that there was somebody that loved me enough. I didn’t know all of the layers to what God’s love meant, but I did know that His love meant rescue because I experienced it. I would go to church, and I felt safe ,and I would experience this worship in… in… in His presence, and I didn’t know what to call it at the time. And then as I got older, I started experiencing what I didn’t know at the time was depression, anxiety and all of the weight of the trauma started to overwhelm me. And so, then I… I struggled a little bit understanding why another thing. And then as a teenager, I… I really start to identify me and I get to have a relationship with Jesus, and it gets to be my own, and it gets to be personal, but what I’m hearing, I’m experiencing in my heart. And so, although the messaging from my childhood was just a lack of trust and what I believed about myself was unworthy as I… began to be a teenager and I’m wrestling with depression and anxiety, I still knew that there was an overwhelming presence of God that just had a care for me, like God… God loves you deeply, and you are worthy of love, and you are worthy of care. And then I started experiencing it from the people around me. So, whether that was church people, you know, it wasn’t my family in that season because they didn’t know what to offer me, but it was the people that were ministering to me and discipling me at church that I started to see, okay, this is what… this is what it looks like to… the tangible hands of God.
Elisa: I’m listening into how you’re unraveling this, and I’m wondering if this message that you received as a child of do as I say, not as I do, and being a rule follower, because really it was survival for you.
Brittany: Yeah.
Elisa: How did that mantra infiltrate God’s message that I love you no matter what? You know, how did you reconcile those two things? Was that a struggle for you? Did you have to tease those things apart?
Brittany: For sure, and I think you, kind of, never stop because you’re… you’re constantly reminded of those things. Even now at thirty-eight years old, I find myself following rules that I created. Like, I think that it’s a rule and it’s not a rule. So, I have to remind…
Elisa: That’s so good.
Brittany: … myself… you know what I mean? Like, I have to remind myself that, like, the six-year-old version of me didn’t get what I needed, and I believe that doing as I say, and not as I do was everything that every adult that I’m supposed to trust, I had to do what they said. And now I’m experiencing this love of God that doesn’t… He doesn’t want anything from me except for my heart. And… and then there’s the other things, the obedience and all that comes with that, because I desire that, because I love Him back. And so, where I thought that I had to do, do, do, do, do, because that’s what I was told to do, what I’m experiencing even now in my thirty-eight-year-old self is that as I heal the six to seven-, eight-, nine-, ten-year-old Brittany, then God’s… like expressing to me His great deep love for me that doesn’t require me to just do as I say, and not as I do, like I’m doing as He says, I’m doing as He does, because He is love. He is God. He is kind. He, you know, so all of those things are gifts for me.
Elisa: You have to almost reinvent or redefine who God is…
Brittany: For sure.
Elisa: … because… I think a lot of us lay those legalistic, if you will, expectations on God that we absorb from a variety of upbringings. You know, we lay them on God, then we have to deconstruct them, so to speak.
Brittany: Right.
Elisa: Do you know how old you were, thinking back on when you began to go, something’s wrong with me, something’s off? And how did you reveal that? How did you leak that out in such a way that you could begin to work on it?
Brittany: To be honest, walking through the season of trauma that I did, that after a while, I mean, I’m in my eighteen or nineteen and I’m realizing why I got a heal from this, but when I was in my mid-twenties, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And prior to that, I start experience these highs and lows that I could not explain. And when you walk through a season of trauma, it… it’s easy to make sense of, okay, I’m feeling sad today because I’m thinking about X, Y, and Z from my past. But this was something that was just like, wow, I’m experiencing these highs and lows, and I didn’t even know that they were highs and lows to be honest. I just felt my body doing things that I wouldn’t do, or I felt my behaviors turning into things that I didn’t, so, it wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I realized something has to shift and I need to go deeper in healing, but it’s even something more than that because I felt, you know, I would spend a season where I was in heavy depression or then I would be completely euphoric… I would be, like, in this major high and I… it didn’t make sense to me. And I would say…
Elisa: That’s confusing, yeah.
Brittany: … very confusing because when I was eighteen and nineteen and I’m like, okay, I’m out of the situation. I removed myself from the trauma of abuse and I removed myself from maybe some dynamics in my family that were hard. And so, at this point I’m… I’m in ministry with my husband and I’m like, whoa, what is… what is life right now? Like, why all of a sudden out… and it felt like… all of a sudden and out of nowhere, but it really wasn’t, it was a traumatic event that happened, almost triggered this response that was probably laying in me. It just happened that way. And so, probably in my twenties is when I realized that something has to change. And I started seeking a therapist where we started working and digging, but I actually needed help. I… I couldn’t do it by myself…
Elisa: Yeah, yeah.
Brittany: … I mean, sometimes I think we assume that, you know, it’s just three points and a prayer and it gets us through, but this took a team to help me walk through and recognize that there’s something greater happening there. And so… even though I’m healing the younger version of Brittany, I’m now where I’m talking more about, okay, there’s a mental illness there that’s also impacting the way that you behave in the way that you live life. And so… and there’s help for me.
Elisa: Yes. I want to go into the term bipolar. Did that scare you to receive a diagnosis called bipolar disorder?
Brittany: Absolutely. I never really heard about bipolar. You know, when you’re… you’re in church, you hear about anxiety and you hear about depression and it’s usually kind of… and I would say this for the greater church, but a lot of times in my experiences, it was kind of spoken quickly over, and most times it was, you can pray and God’s going to heal you, all of that. So, I never really heard about bipolar disorder except for like you watching TV shows and on TV, it gives you a very different picture than…
Elisa: Right, right.
Brittany: … what it is in reality, and so it did scare me. It did scare me. I remember what it was like to walk into the office, and I’d spent a great deal of time with a psychiatrist before I had that diagnosis, and I remember walking out of the office after the diagnosis, feeling like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. And I actually had to walk into a leadership meeting at church and then I’d been crying and just sitting like, what is happening with my life? And it is not an easy thing to hear. However, it almost felt like I needed somebody to tell me that I wasn’t as broken as I thought I was, or that I wasn’t crazy and there’s help for me, but I didn’t know that it would come like that. And so, I definitely was afraid, it scared me, and I… I also felt like, what are people going to think? What will people think? My husband and I, at that time, we were youth pastors at a church and it felt like I’d never heard this before from anyone. So, I need to keep this to myself. I need to be quiet. I don’t need to tell anybody because they’ll probably disqualify me, or they’ll tell us that we can’t do what we’re doing. And so, for a bit, I… I just kept it to myself because I was too ashamed to tell anyone.
Elisa: Yeah. Ding, ding, ding, you know, disqualification is what comes up. I mean, we disqualify ourselves. And if we’re going to do that, then surely everybody else is. I’m struck by how you said our church had, maybe, at this point heard of the word depression, the word anxiety, which used to be, you know, forty years ago, unheard of within the body of Christ. So, you’re standing on the work of many people who’ve begun to embrace the reality of depression and anxiety, but now here comes this term bipolar, and that’s where a whole bunch of new bells go off. You know, people don’t really understand what bipolar means. I mean, it’s hard when you’re even diagnosed to understand it. How do you define it? How would you explain it to your buddy, to your best friend, to your husband?
Brittany: Yes. I mean, the way that I think I experienced bipolar, there are days where I feel like I am in a black hole, where I feel like you’re down so deep and you can’t even see the light peeking through. And then there are days where I feel like I could climb the walls, I could do everything. But I think the misconception is that it’s like that every single day, is that each of my days are one day I’m this way, one day I’m that way. I can go a period of time without experiencing either of those things, and then I have a season where I’m experience both of those things and it just looks different for everyone. But it is a chemical imbalance that’s defined by highs and lows, and those highs and lows can look different for every single person. And for me, when I really recognized that there was something going on, I remember experiencing this high that I did not know how to make sense of. I was stayed awake for four days straight. I cleaned everything in my house, washed all the walls, did all the laundry, did everything. And, of course, my husband, he’s, you know, he’s… he already knows I’m the type person, I love my house to be clean. So, that was like, oh, your house is clean. But after a couple of days of not sleeping, it became very apparent that something was going on and… and what goes up comes down. And so, I experienced a… about a month of depression, and I realized I… I need to get further help with this. And so, it just looks different for every person. It’s hard to say this person’s going to look like that, or that person’s going to look like that. It just looks different, but it is highs and lows. And so, my experience is that I feel like I’m in a black hole sometimes where I just can’t get out. I can’t see the light. And then there are days where I feel like I could conquer the world and I’m on, like, overdrive. And so, I try really hard to make sense and pay attention of it for myself so that when I am in those spaces, something I like to say all the time is that I practice healthy rhythms when I’m well, so that when I’m not well I already have this healthy-rhythm system going down for myself because the problem is is that when you’re wrestling with anxiety, depression, whatever illness you have, bipolar, you get into a space where you don’t feel like it, where you don’t want to. So, if I’m stuck in bed, I don’t want to get out of bed, but because it’s in my rhythm to get up, and go brush your teeth, wash your face, whether you want to or not, I do these healthy rhythms when I’m well, so when I’m not well, I’m already in a pattern of doing healthy things.
Elisa: That is really rich. And we’ve got to pause right here because for historically, especially in the body of Christ, there have been so many assumptions and then conclusions made about such diagnosis and let’s just use the word mental illness, that it’s all from Satan, that it’s all our fault, that if we pray enough, and believe enough, and are good enough Christians and followers of Jesus and allow Him into our lives that we’ll be healed and there’s no such thing. Speak to that, I will just say misconclusion.
Brittany: I believe that healing is possible. Because I know who my God is, and His track record is really good in my life. His track record is marked by faithfulness. However, I do understand that there’s a lot of people that… and maybe it’s because people have never heard of it before, they don’t understand it. And I almost feel like sometimes people think that we’re taking away from God. When we say, hey, I have this illness and I’m taking medication. I’m actually not taking away from Him. God’s using these amazing, brilliant psychiatrists and therapists who can help us walk out this thing together. And there is a misconception. I get messages on social media often from people after I speak somewhere about, you know, God’s going to bring healing. Don’t speak that over your life and all of that. And I’m like, if I had a headache, I would be taking a Tylenol.
Elisa: Amen.
Brittany: If I struggle with any… any physical issue you’re to take a Tylenol and I don’t think they’re much different from each other. And so, when you’re sick, you go to the hospital, you go to a doctor. When I’m sick… in my mind and in my emotions, I go see a therapist and psychiatrist. And I do think that God can heal me at the same time. I think they both can run together. I’m going to still believe and yet still walk out what God has placed in front of me, and sometimes that looks like a therapist, a psychiatrist, medication, and I don’t think there’s absolutely anything wrong with it, but I also do understand that there’s people that just don’t get it. And so, I don’t want to throw that out either. I actually understand you, and I wish that I could have more conversations, which is why I feel like I share my story in this way, because I’m a real person living with it. So, the moment that this podcast is over, I’m still going to have bipolar. It doesn’t change from this. And yet I’m still going to believe that God is exactly who He says He is. The Bible talks about in 1 Peter 5:10, “And after you have suffered a little while,” I don’t know what “little while” looks like, but I know that God is faithful. I know that God is true. I know that His word is true. And so right now I’m in a season where it appears that this is not changing yet, but I know that it’s coming. And so, I think I would be…I’m… more encouraged by that. You know, I could say, you know, well, God, it hasn’t happened yet because there are people that You say that it’s going to happen at this time and it hasn’t happened yet. I’m not going to walk away from God because it didn’t happen the way that I see it. There’s so many lives that get to be impacted and changed because we share our stories about being wounded. We are a… a great witness out of our woundedness.
Elisa: Love that. How has Being bipolar and struggling with mental illness, with anxiety, with depression, how has that played out in your family, in your husband, in your marriage with him, and with your kids?
Brittany: Yeah, man, I am a mom of two amazing girls, and my oldest daughter is fourteen, my youngest daughter is ten, and I’ve been married for almost fifteen years. And so, the truth is is that my family has watched a lot. They’ve watched me be stuck in bed somedays, they’ve watched me cry. They’ve watched me go to the hospital and come back several times. And… and the way, I think, initially we just didn’t understand and so, we were in survival mode as a family. And now my family, you know, it’s amazing because my girls get to travel with me some and… and my husband as well. And the beauty is that they’ve… they’ve seen the struggle and they’ve watched me cry and now they get to see what God’s doing from that broken place and, like, how God is helping shape other people’s lives and maybe encourage other people through it. And I… so, I think it is hard. I don’t want to give this idea that it’s… it’s just so easy just because I’m a Christian.
Elisa: Yeah.
Brittany: I love Jesus a whole lot. My family loves Jesus a whole lot, but it is hard. It’s hard because there’s days that just don’t make sense, right? However, we are very solid as a unit. And we invite other people into the story. So… so while Travis and I, we have been married fifteen years, I love him, he knows every detail of my life. We don’t just isolate this situation and say, we can just manage this on our own. We actually invite community and because that’s how you heal, you heal with community. And so, my husband, obviously he sees a therapist, I see a therapist. My girls are doing their own journey as well. And so together, we are trying to do our very best in modeling what we speak about, modeling what I’m talking to you about, and not just saying that we’re on this journey of healing, but I… I want to make sure that my life speaks that. And also that my family… the person that they see in this house is the same person that people see on a platform or on a podcast. And so, we walk it out together. But my… I would say my girls, they get to talk feelings in our home. They get to tell me when something hurts, or mommy that… that hurt when you said that, or mommy, that’s really hard that we’re walking through this. We are just super honest, and we try to really process together because my girls as they get older, you know, I don’t ever want them to think that just because we’ve walked through this, they have to be perfect, or they have to have it all together. They get to speak about their pain as well.
Elisa: The principle of revealing and authenticity is so powerful in what you’re sharing, Brittany. I love how you say it’s not done. It’s not perfect. It’s not, bing! You know, you still have days you can’t get out of bed. Now, take us into the real grit of… And by the way, you’re a pastor. How do you minister in such openness, and honesty, and community?
Brittany: Yeah, yeah.
Elisa: With people.
Brittany: So, my husband and I planted our church in 2017. And… and again, I said, prior to that, we were pastoring at a church that was local who… they helped us plant out. And prior to us planting the church, when I was diagnosed I… I remember a couple years before saying to my husband, knowing that we were going into church planting that I… I did not want to do this if I had to pretend. I didn’t want to go into this and have to pretend like life was just so perfect, and it was beautiful, and it… it looked one way, because I think there’s enough of that. Right? And also, I don’t expect everybody to express as much as I do about my own pain, but I will say this is something that you can’t hide. There are days that are just super hard. And if I had to pretend, it was… it would be incredibly hard. So, I told him, hey, if we’re going to plant a church, I just really don’t want to pretend that we don’t have this going on in our life. And, you know, my husband is incredible and has walked this entire journey with me without judgment, with such compassion and care, and he could have been like, you know what, then, we’re just not doing this, or…
Elisa: Yup.
Brittany: … no, I need you to… I need you to keep this closed. But he was so good about, hey, no, this is… we’re in this together and we’re walking this journey together. And so, we launched our church September of 2017, and December of 2017 I shared a message with our church and… and I shared my story of having bipolar, and I was terrified. That was…
Elisa: Oh, gosh.
Brittany: … the first time I ever shared in, like, a big crowd like that so, you know, I was… I was so nervous one, because you’re like, these people don’t have to come back, you know, like, they don’t have to come back. And they’re hearing a… a leader, a pastor stand on the stage and say that she has bipolar, and for some people that could be such a put off because they’ve never heard it before, or because it just almost seems like well, how do you lead us, when you have your preconceived notions of what mental illness is. So, if most people believe that it’s up and down, up and down every day then there is no reason for you to believe that I can lead you well. But I think what I assumed I would be met with, I assumed I’d be met with judgment, and I assumed that people would be kind of dismissive. I was met with a lot of grace and compassion. And I know that I don’t expect our people to carry that, but what was beautiful was that so many people were waiting for a leader to get on stage and say, hey, I hurt, too, but let me show you what I do to walk through it, because it’s easy for me to say, I’m going to tell you my story. I don’t want people to just hear my story. I don’t… I don’t think that that’s going to help people. What will help people is, hey, here’s what my story is, and this is how the Lord is walking me through. So, I didn’t just leave them hanging with, hey, I have bipolar. I just want to let you know. I have bipolar, and these are some things that I’m doing to help walk me through this journey. And I invite you to maybe consider that God can do the same thing in you and not just me because I’m a leader. And so, I had so many people come up to me after that service, like, and they… they’ve had family members that wrestle with mental illness and they just didn’t know what to do. And… and here I am saying, hey, I… I see a therapist, and I pastor this church with my husband.
Elisa: Yeah, yeah.
Brittany: And I… I… I’m talking to people to get help with this. And… and they’ve watched me go through a pattern of healing, and they’re… they get to see it in real time. And so, I think that’s beautiful in our experience because, I mean, we have this brand new church that I just thought people would walk away. I thought people would be like, no, and really they just were waiting for somebody to say, I struggled too, now tell me what to do. And so, that’s been… that’s been really sweet for me because I just… I was so nervous, and even when I speak now, you know, I hear different things from people and I just… I have a different level of understanding now because of that particular experience. So, I don’t look at people crazy when they say things to me like, don’t speak that over your life and you’re… you’re talking… that’s… demon possession or whatever people say. I kind of have a different grace for people because of my experience when I initially started sharing my story because what I’ve met with.
Elisa: You experienced that you bless them because you gave them permission to not be perfect even as they follow Jesus, but you also experienced the blessing of being received just as you are. There’s a phrase that’s ruminating in me and “it’s vulnerability is believability.” You know, we think we’re going to just crash in a million pieces and be broken forever. And yet what happens is that when we are vulnerable, we’re believed, and it actually validates our truths, and the truths Jesus is working in us. So, it… it’s a… very counterintuitive, but I think that’s what Paul’s talking about when he talks about that. we’ve been given this treasure in jars of clay so that we know that the strength is not from ourselves. It… we know that, but also others get to see us model that. Brittany, there are women, there are listeners struggling. Maybe they haven’t been diagnosed. Maybe they don’t know what’s off here and what their answer is. Maybe they don’t have a husband who… or even one who’s understanding. Maybe they are in a more rejecting community. Maybe they don’t actually know that Jesus can love them the way they are. I would love for you to offer some perspective to that person and some hope…
Brittany: Yeah.
Elisa: … if you could.
Brittany: I think the first thing that I would say to any woman that’s listening that maybe have those experiences or, you know, you’ve recently been diagnosed or not at all, you’re experiencing the weight of depression, you’re experiencing the weight of something that you can’t make sense of. The first thing I would say to you is I see you. That’s what I wanted people to do for me, to see me, even though I didn’t know how to fully express what I needed in that season. I see you and you are not alone. I think we need to know that before we know steps. You know, I can give you three steps to get well, but the truth is is that we feel so isolated, and shame thrives in isolation, so the shame that we experienced from all of this weight of the pain, we need to know that we’re not alone, and that we are so seen, and we are so loved, and one thing that I think helped me the most in all of this is that God invites me to participate in the healing that I want to see. Healing is not a straight line. It is much like a roller coaster. Man, it is hard, but it gets good, and you get to hang in there to see the good. And so, I just encourage anyone that’s listening that you get to be a participator in the healing that you want to see. And sometimes the steps are not going to be ginormous steps. They’re baby steps. You got up this morning, way to go. You brush your teeth, man, that’s awesome, because I know the days where it feels like you can’t even do that. And so, know that you’re not alone, that you get to participate, and participation sometimes as many steps towards healing and that is amazing, and you get to congratulate yourself every step that you take towards healing. And it’s hard, but it gets good. So, hang in there to see the good.
Elisa: Thanks. And we don’t have to believe the lie that having a mental illness, struggling with anxiety, or depression, or a bipolar diagnosis would disqualify us from being used in God’s kingdom. I mean, I think of all the stories in Scripture, you know, whether it’s Mary Magdalene or maybe it was the woman with the issue of blood or, you know, whoever it is, all of us come with something. Everybody’s got something. And… and so, let’s speak against that disqualification. We may be directed by those woundings, and those struggles, and even illnesses, to ask for and receive help. But like you said, you know, you get to be a part of your own redemption. And as you participate, you get to watch God use you to help and bring others to redemption, too.
Brittany: Yeah. There’s a quote that I heard Lisa Harper share many years ago. This was before my diagnosis actually. And she said, you can limp and lead. And that has stuck with me for years because when I disqualified myself, and when I thought other people were going to disqualify me, I had this thing in my mind reminding me that you can still limp and lead. When you know that you’re called God’s always going to equip you. I don’t think that there’s a single perfect person in this world that God has called that he’s not using. We all have some level of brokenness. I think we… it’s magnified when we have to deal with it every single day. And so, for me, bipolar is something that I walk through every day, but man, I get to limp and lead. So, that means that I don’t have to have it all together. I don’t have to be perfect. Now I need to be taking steps, [music] a mentor of mine always says, never serve anything uncooked, and so I’m not going to get on a platform and start talking about things that I’m actually not experiencing and walking through healing, but I don’t have to have this perfect map. But I get to experience the fullness of the calling, the fullness of joy, the fullness of God’s blessing, even in the midst of having a diagnosis that maybe the outside world doesn’t understand. Maybe people have disqualified me and said, hey, you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing, but I was called by God, not by man. So, I get to limp and lead. And so, I’m walking through that. And… and there may be someone listening that’s experiencing some level of brokenness that you think you have to have it picture perfect in order to follow the call of God. You say yes to God every single time. You say yes to him every single time, even with the limp. And so, here I am limping a little bit, walking through a healing journey, still trying to heal the six-year-old version of me, but I’m going to lead because I said yes to Him, and because He’s always equipping me throughout the journey. And it doesn’t look the same every single step, but… but He’s equipping me because He’s called me.
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Elisa: God calls us to bigger things for His kingdom, even when we feel unequipped. You know, I really enjoyed this conversation with Brittany, and I hope you did, too. Please be sure to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast. Before we go, be sure to check out our show notes for links to learn more about Brittany and her story. You can find that and more at godhearsher.org. That’s godhearsher.org. Thanks for joining us. And don’t forget, God hears you, He sees you, and He loves you because you are His.
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Elisa: Today’s episode was engineered by Anne Stevens and produced by Jade Gustman and Mary Jo Clark. We also want to thank Maya and Dawn for all their help and support. Thanks everyone.
Vivian: Our Daily Bread Ministries is a donor-supported nonprofit ministry dedicated to making the life-changing wisdom and stories of the Bible come alive for all people around the world.
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Vivian: God Hears Her is a production of our Daily Bread Ministries.
Brittany Jones is a wife and mom of two beautiful girls and a sweet Goldendoodle. She is a national speaker, writer, and ministry leader at her local church. Brittany is passionate about seeing people live in freedom and wholeness as they heal from trauma and mental health struggles. In light of Brittany’s personal story of childhood abuse and mental illness, she has a greater desire to encourage people on their journey. Brittany and her family currently reside in Richmond, Virginia, where they planted and pastor Motivation Church.
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