Episode 1: Don’t Sleepwalk Through Life

Welcome to our podcast– The Jess Connolly Podcast! 

This podcast is for you. It’s not my podcast, it’s ours. It’s for women who crave light-hearted conversations and deeply spiritual truths. It’s for the women who are busy, tired, waiting, growing, dreaming, working, or praying about what’s next. 

In this episode, Jess shares her heart behind the podcast, answers questions about the new podcast, and tells us where we will go together. 

Picture this: book clubs, episodes with Nick, health hacks, episodes on intimacy with God, and friendship!

Whether you’re listening in the messy, the mundane, the quiet, or the busiest season ever - We’ve been praying for you and We’re so glad you’re here.

Let’s Go. 

Don’t Miss: 

We’ve got a free gift for you: ⁠Wake Up Your Soul⁠ - it’s got a short quiz you can take to check in on your soul + a few quick journaling prompts to help you process. 

The Logos Bible Study app contains a powerful Bible study and sermon prep platform that allows you to study Scripture and consult commentaries, devotionals, Bible dictionaries, and more—all from your computer, tablet, or phone. You can get started with the Logos Bible Study app with an 10% off at www.logos.com/jessconnolly.

Episode Transcript:

This is how I picture you.

You are a woman who wants to love God, your people, and you want to use what you've got to change the world. But if you're like me, you also want to actually live, to be awake, joyful, and energized enough to actually be present for your life.

We are women who want to live as daughters of God and human beings, not just workers who are constantly doing On top of that, we're fighting a culture of reactive defeat, one that assumes exhaustion is inevitable.

Instead of fighting for rest, we are surrounded by people who idolize busyness over a sustainable pace, and most of us are used to being rewarded for pushing past our human boundaries and limitations.

If you're like me, you sometimes wonder if you're so busy living life that you might be missing it.

I wonder if maybe sometimes your fatigue is even louder than the voice of God.

And I wonder if sometimes it's just easier for you to live on autopilot, stuffing your emotions, your desires, your pain, even your joy.

You don't want to sleepwalk through life. I don't either. But who has time and energy to even know what living fully awake would look like? So here's the thing. Jesus came to purchase abundant life for us, but is this it?

Did he mean for us to live exhausted and overwhelmed, burden with impossible expectations and heavy, laden with shame?

I know we want to live in awe of God, to run on mission and joyful surrender and not just sleepwalk through our days.

If these are the questions you're asking, or if this sounds like your life, you're in the right spot.

I'm Jess Connelly and honestly, this is our podcast, a space for you and I to be curious about how we can live fully awake with God.

Hey friends, I'm Jess Connolly and it is a huge honor to welcome you again to our podcast.

This is hopefully not just for me. I want it to be a blessing for you.

It's actually more important to me that it's life giving for you than it is that it's life giving for me.

And I am so incredibly grateful you're here.

If you are a listener of the Go and Tell Gals podcast, we've just done a little switcheroo.

If you have no idea what Go and Tell Gals is, I would love to tell you.

It's an organization I run that coaches women and equips them to use their God-given gifts.

So our podcast used to be called the Go and Tell Girls podcast.

We've now just done a little pivot and we're calling it the Jess Connolly Podcast.

And that's because we don't want to just talk about mission and we don't want to just talk about equipping and coaching women to use their gifts.

We know that you're a whole person. You're a whole person who has relationships and a life and a full schedule and maybe kids and maybe a marriage and maybe school and maybe roommates.

And you are trying to juggle and carry all of that while also being a woman who loves God and hears from him and spends time with him.

And so we really want this podcast to serve all of who you are.

Here's what you can expect here, a little bit of everything.

I've been using the phrases lighthearted and soul deep because I hope and pray in the name of Jesus.

You experience both of those.

I know some of you are going to be listening in very tense or heavy seasons, and some of you are going to be listening in maybe more mundane and even moments that feel boring.

And so my hope is that wherever you're at, if it's a great day, a hard day, a stressful day, a quiet day that you feel encouraged and a little bit inspired, and mostly that you walk away feeling equipped to live fully awake with God.

Here's a little bit of what you can expect from our upcoming episodes.

We're definitely going to do interviews.

I have a lot of fun ideas about a book club.

Maybe us reading a book together once a month that just again helps us live awake with God.

But also, you know what I'm saying?

We might talk about hair a little bit.

We might talk about ways to engage in fashion that doesn't make us feel crazy and doesn't make us feel fussy, but also helps us not worry so much about what we put on our bodies because that's what the Bible tells us to do.

We may talk about marriage and relationships and singleness, and I don't know, we're just going to really dive in.

And most of all, we'd love to hear from you.

So since this is our first episode, please holler at me on Instagram, send me a DM, comment on a post I want to hear from you because again, most of all, it's important to me that you enjoy the episode way more than I do.

This podcast is for women who live on mission and also want to walk in abundance.

I pray it feels like a coffee date with a friend who understands how full your life is but also wants to help you feel free.

And again, you can listen in the midst of the mess, the mundane.

But we pray you leave feeling understood and less overwhelmed.

I'm pomped about the interviews we have coming up.

I definitely want to interview some authors if we're going to read some books together and hear from other leaders or just real women living their life that you guys want to hear from.

But you're also going to hear from my friends and family a good bit.

Because I want this to be honest and transparent.

And so we'll be talking about what these different facets of life look like for us.

And I know you understand this.

I am able to be a lot more honest with people who are in my life than I am with strangers.

And so more than anything, we want this to be a space for honesty for everyone.

But today we're going to talk a tiny bit about this phrase that I have just been really praying over and I feel like God kind of gave me a few months ago this idea of living fully awake.

So I'll just say right away we almost called the podcast Living Fully Awake.

And I really was just praying a few months ago and I was asking like, God, I am gonna be a woman who spends time on the Internet.

I'm gonna be a woman who posts on Instagram.

I feel like that's where you've called me.

I love to go on there and encourage people.

I'm gonna be a woman who sends out newsletters and what's hopefully biblical truth in a life giving way in people's inboxes.

I'm gonna have a podcast.

I really want to reach the women who are carpooling or driving to work or working out and need something life giving to listen to.

But what is the one thing I want to tell them over and over again?

If I could only tell women one thing, what would it be?

And this is the phrase that kind of kept rising to the surface for me, that really I want women to feel not only this is big, not only the permission to live fully awake, but the invitation from God.

I really pray that especially after you listen to this podcast again, you don't just feel permission from God to live fully, awaken your relationships and in your body and in your mind and in your emotions, but that you feel God's invitation.

That you know that your father loves you so much that he doesn't want you to numb out or press your feelings down or not process your thoughts or not really walk in abundance in all the different areas of your life.

So that being said, we almost called the podcast Living Fully Awake.

And then really quickly I got some private feedback from people who are like, hey, I kind of feel like you're like talking about like vaccines or maybe something funky here.

Like, what do you mean?

I was like, OK, OK, let's don't do that.

Because really, what we're talking about is walking in abundance.

So you may not hear me say the phrase living fully awake every single episode.

You might not hear me say it for months.

But if you're listening to this first episode, then you'll have the full picture of, oh, this is what Jess is praying for us and This is why she's hosting this podcast.

So as we're talking about this phrase, I want to tell you guys this story.

We actually had a team meeting this week where the phrase came up and our team has been spread apart for the whole summer.

We had two of our amazing team members go on maternity leave and while we blessed them and send them to go do what was so important in that season of life, we missed them.

And then also it was summer.

So we had a lot of people transient.

We just weren't together a ton.

We were working out of the office and this week we all came back together for our first time and our first team meeting all in the same place and our team meetings are about an hour long.

This one was about 3 hours long because we had so much to catch up on.

We were talking about what God had taught us.

We were talking about our desires for the Fall, our desires for our business, and we were kind of trying to sum up this feeling that all of us had for the fall.

We were saying it in different ways.

Like I had been talking to the gals about how there's this huge part of me that always wants to get back to 15 year old Jess.

So my story with me and Jesus is that I met Jesus at 15 and kind of a radical moment got saved one night and the next day I was a completely different person and I was obsessed with the Bible.

I have a core memory of having my Bible open the day after I got saved and just flipping page after page after page.

I wanted to know God, I wanted to know things about him.

I wanted to talk to other people about him, and then I felt really quickly called to Minish Street after that.

And so there's always this part of me that wants to get back to that desperation and that hunger for God and truly like a sense of bravery when it comes to calling.

Just like I'll go anywhere, I'll do anything.

And so I was sharing that with the team and a few other women were sharing like okay.

Here are my desires for the fall.

I'm hoping for some restoration or wholeness or, you know, even in the midst of a really hard season, to just be who God has made me to be.

And we were all talking.

And I said, I think what we're saying is we want to live fully awake.

I think what we're saying is like, that's what all of us want.

We want to be awake to what God's doing, his presence, his power, his voice.

We don't want to just turn our brains off.

We don't want to sleepwalk through life.

We don't want to live on autopilot.

We don't want to miss the glory and the goodness of what he's doing right here.

And right now we want to have our eyes open to it.

And so I was like, OK, well, thankfully that's the theme of the podcast, cuz I think we are all feeling that too.

Like, yeah, we want to live fully awake.

But that being said, again, you might not hear me say this phrase again for months.

I don't know, Maybe it'll pop up, maybe it won't.

But you'll know secretly that this is my desire for the podcast.

But that being said, I went on Instagram this week and I shared a little bit about the podcast and how it was coming up and how Living Fully Awake was the theme.

And I said, hey, do you guys have any questions that I could just answer right off the bat?

And honestly, the questions were so helpful for me to really speak into and give a little bit of vision around where we're going.

And I pray that not only these questions or the answers to these questions help you understand what this podcast is, but I actually pray they equip and empower you today and maybe even just inspire you right now where we're at.

So question number one is, is the idea of living fully awake.

I got this question in multiple different forms.

Is the idea of living fully awake, is this woo woo or is this about Jesus?

Like is this going somewhere Like, you know, maybe spiritual but not super rooted in the gospel?

What does this even mean?

And what does this mean for women who love the Bible?

And I just want to say right now, in the name of Jesus, that living fully awake, and more specifically you living fully awake, is God's idea.

He sent his Son to pay for your eternal life, but also for your abundance in your actual life.

And your Father, who gives every good gift to you, would never want you sleepwalking through life.

He would never want you just barreling forward and working hard and hustling and never paying attention to your feelings, your mind, your body, your relationships.

He is a good Father and just in the same way that I love when my kids wake up and I see their full personalities and they're stretching into their lives in the same way.

I would be so sad if my kids slept all day and feel like this is not it for you.

Living fully awake is not some woo woo idea that's apart from the gospel.

It's deeply rooted in the abundance that's purchased for us on the cross of Christ, at least from my perspective.

OK, so another great core question is what do you mean when you say living fully awake?

Really helpful.

I would love to tell you for me what I mean when I say I want to live fully awake, emotionally, mentally, relationally, in my body, spiritually.

What I mean is that I want to act like I believe Jesus purchased abundant life for me.

I want to live into my relationships like I believe abundance is real.

I want to live in my body like I believe freedom and holiness is real.

I want to talk about hair in a way that says I believe abundance is real.

I don't want to live chained and contained.

I don't want to live small because I don't believe that's the life God purchased for me.

But none of this is about my glory or your glory, or seeking lives that are outside his will or outside his goodness.

All of it is just about stepping into what he purchased for us.

OK, outside of those two questions, I think this might be the most important question that I got in every different form.

So in a million different ways I got this question.

How does this apply to me?

If I have small kids at home, what does it look like to live fully awake?

If I'm struggling with depression, how do I live fully awake?

If I'm a student in grad school, I would even throw in How do I do it if I'm very busy and I have a full life.

And so I wanna just speak in to that right now and say I believe it might be more important that we intentionally live fully awake in full, busy, hectic seasons in ones where we feel like we're just caregivers and we don't know who we are anymore In seasons when we feel lonely and seasons when we feel broken and messy.

It might be more important in the seasons where we don't feel like we can access abundance to intentionally try to come into agreement with it.

So if you're listening and you're like, you literally do not understand, I've got a toddler at home, I haven't slept for three years, someone in my family is sick, or I'm going through a divorce.

If you are listening to this and in any way discrediting yourself from the capacity to receive this good gift from your father, I want to just say you're in the exact right space and the fact that you feel that resistance is so real.

I have so much compassion for that, but in light of that, I wanted to just ask if I could share a little bit of my story and why this is so important to me.

So in 2011, I had three small kids.

My kids were three, two, and one.

At one point I had three kids under 3, and it was wild and hectic and crazy.

And in this season, in 2011, our family had just been up against the wall.

I actually like to tell people, imagine the people who are in your community or who are in your church or who you know, who just can't get it together and you're like, oh, I'm so sorry for them, like they just can't get it together.

That was us.

That was the Connolly family.

Then we were living and some of you who have read my books may have heard this story.

We were living in what we call the fishing Shack.

It was a two-bedroom check in the middle of nowhere that someone had graciously given us to live at at a really cheap rent because we were living literally under the poverty level we had.

We had been living under the poverty line for a couple of years at that point.

We had left ministry jobs in the middle of the recession and we were broke.

My husband couldn't get a job.

I didn't even feel able to work.

I was struggling with intense, intense, intense postpartum depression.

I'd actually had postpartum depression after my second pregnancy, not gotten help, and then gotten pregnant again unexpectedly, and so it felt like it was compounded.

Our daughter had just been diagnosed with a seizure disorder.

She had just spent a couple of weeks in the ICU after having a grand Mal seizure and then we had unexpectedly gotten pregnant with our fourth child and miscarried.

And that was around June of 2011.

And if that sounds wild and messy and almost unbelievable living, it felt wild and messy and almost unbelievable.

And in that season, I don't know that you would have even recognized me.

I laid on the couch, catatonic whenever I didn't have to be taking care of my kids.

My husband and I shared one car and one cell phone.

So I would keep the cell phone at home and he would drive the car to work and I would be home with these toddlers in this fishing shack.

And I would just try my best to take care of them throughout the day.

And then as soon as they didn't need me either at nap time or at night, I would just kind of collapse into defeat.

So much defeat.

And in the middle of that, in the middle of getting counseling and working with doctors and getting counsel from pastors and having so many faithful friends and family pray for me, I started to realize I don't feel like abundant life is for me.

But I am going to have to start to act like it is for me.

I'm going to have to start to act free and act alive and act like God loves me, even though I don't feel it.

Because if not, this season is going to Take Me Out.

And it started in such small ways.

It started in the smallest ways, in ways that costed no money, in ways that I could do while I had toddlers.

It was as simple as I'm going to put on a workout video early in the morning just to move my body and get some endorphins.

It was as simple as making myself a lunch that looked kind of beautiful while my kids were taking a nap, reading, journaling, going on, walk with walks with friends, talking to my husband about how I was feeling, inviting other people into conversations.

And all of it was terrifying.

And all of it was, I don't know, messy.

But I started to really believe this truth, that the enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy.

And Jesus came, that we might have eternal and abundant life.

And so slowly but surely, we started to see healing in all these different areas of our life.

But here's the thing.

It's not just that in the really broken seasons, I want women to feel like they can live fully awake.

Because the truth for me is this, that even after that season, time and time and time again in my life, I'll get so busy.

Or I'll start living like it's my job to serve everybody else and take care of everybody else.

Or I'll start adding things onto my plate.

That doesn't matter.

But I'm just trying to please everybody else.

Or I'll stop taking care of my body, or stop taking care of my mind and stop taking care of my emotions.

And I have to go right back to some of those really simple practices, most of which are just rooted in believing truth about what that is said about my life.

So wherever you find yourself, this is for you.

But specifically, if you find yourself in a season where you think there's no way I can do anything that would make me feel fully awake, I pray that this podcast is a soft place to land.

And that maybe even just listening to it sparks something in you that helps you know how loved and cared for you are by God, and that he wants you to feel as awake as possible.

OK, this is a little bit of a harder question.

What do you do if you want to live fully awake?

You want to walk in the abundance God has for you, but your spouse is not on board?

I think we could also put in here, switch out the word spouse for best friend or roommate or parents or sister.

What do you do if you're in the season where you're like, I want to go for it.

I want to be alive and believe in abundance and my relationships, my body, my mind, my spirit.

But the people around me are like, can you just chill?

Can you just be normal?

Can we just get through the day?

What do you do?

OK, well here's the good news.

You actually don't need human permission to live in abundance.

You don't need it, not from anybody in your life.

It has been purchased for you on the cross of Christ, and no human can hand it to you.

No human can Commission you into it, and no one actually can tell you that freedom is not yours for the taking.

Now, I get that this is funky though, right?

Because how do you go to the people you love and be like you can't tell me this isn't for me.

I think it takes gentleness and I think it takes humility, but I think that they're really good news.

Is this when the people in your life see you living fully awake?

When they see you processing your emotions and feeling awake and present with your mind and enjoying God in your body and rest and movement and all the things, when they see you living like that, they're not going to say, Oh well, I pray in the name of Jesus that they're not going to want you to go back to sleepwalking.

They're going to love you being as healthy as you are.

That's my hope and that's my prayer for you.

But even if that's not the case, I have this quick word for you that God showed me in scripture this week.

I've just been personally studying Galatians one because I love the idea of freedom.

And Galatians is this book that is all about freedom.

In fact, one theologian I was reading this week calls it the Magna Carta of Christianity.

It's this like document.

It's all about our freedom and what we have access to.

And as I was reading it, I was so compelled by this one thing that in the very first verse of Galatians one Paul says this.

He says I'm Paul, not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father.

And I was just so struck by of course, if you're going to write a whole letter about freedom in Christ, you have to identify right at the beginning.

Nobody, nobody gave me permission to do this.

No human asked me to say this.

No man, no pastor, no person, no friend, no family member would look at me and say like, we want to Commission you into this work.

Only God can do that.

And so again, I know all of this can be so tender and none of us want to go to our family members and say, like, just watch out.

I'm living fully awake, just like, sit there and enjoy it.

That's not freedom either, right?

But I do want you to hear this.

Jesus does not purpose what he does not purchase.

And he purchased your life for his glory and for your good, and he wants abundance for you.

Amen.

Amen.

OK, great question.

Coming up next, how do we balance living fully awake and walking in abundance and our responsibilities?

So I want to pause right here and say I think that in questions like this.

Well, #1, if you've listened to the Go and Tell Gals podcast before we switch it over, you've heard us probably say this a million times.

Anytime you ask, how do I balance A and B?

My counter question is always going to be do you need to balance it?

So if you're asking me how do I balance walking and living in abundance and living a life of taking care of my responsibilities, I'm going to ask did God ask you to balance those things out or are you supposed to do both all the time?

I would say that sometimes, I think, especially for women in Christ, we need a more comprehensive picture of freedom.

And freedom is not living totally free of responsibility.

God gave us work.

He gave us lives to cultivate.

Even in the garden before the fall, we see that there's cultivation because humans love having purpose and using what we've got for his glory.

And so I would say you being awake and alive in all of your responsibilities, whether it's motherhood, whether it's a job that you go to, whether it's both, whether it's school, whether it's caring for people who are sick, whether it's cleaning your house, you don't have to balance that with living a life of abundance.

You get to live a life of abundance while you stay present in your responsibility.

I think this is also a lie from the enemy that he wants us to.

I believe that it's one or the other that we can show up and love people, or that we can allow ourselves to be loved by God.

And the truth is, you get to do both.

You get to take care of people.

You get to love, you get to work, you get to honor God, you get to use your gifts, and you get to compassionately receive God's grace and his mercy and his kindness toward you so that you feel also like a whole person.

All right, very last question for our lightning round of questions about living fully Wake and I loved this in it.

And also this question came in a couple of different forms too.

And it's just this, Where do you start?

Like, what does this even mean?

But also, where do you start?

If you're like, OK, I want to walk in abundance.

I want to know what this means to live fully awake in all of these different areas of my life.

What in the world do I do now?

Number one, I'm kind of kidding Slash.

Not kidding.

Keep listening to this podcast because whether again we say the phrase ever again or not, you're going to know we're trying to insert little moments in your life where you can be encouraged and inspired, where you can hear lighthearted conversations and soul deep truths about every part of your life.

And so even just taking the time to listen and let your mind process something and let your emotions feel something and maybe discussing it with a friend, that's it.

That's living fully awake and it will shift and change your life.

And I would say that about almost any podcast that's life giving, not just mine, but.

So number one, you're doing a great job by listening to the podcast.

But also, I would say getting time with God, whether it's 3 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour, at some point in your day, your week, your life, and asking God, your father, this question, What do you think living fully awake means for me?

What do you want it to mean for me?

What kind of full, abundant life do you have in mind?

For me, here's the thing.

My favorite thing about God, one of my top favorite things, is that he's a way better communicator than I am.

So even more than listening to this episode or any coming episodes, you getting with Holy Spirit who wants to communicate with you and noticing what truths you see in scripture, what desires crop up out of that, what gut feelings you have and what happens when you start to talk to him.

That is going to have a profound impact in your life.

Now, that being said, I've also made a little resource for you.

If you're like, I literally have no idea.

I don't know where to start.

I've made a little free PDF for you.

You don't have to pay any money.

You're going to find a link to it in the show notes.

You can also find out on my social media.

It's called Wake Up Your Soul and it has a short quiz to just help you pay attention to where you might be feeling asleep and not awake.

And it also has a few quick journaling prompts for you.

Because I know a lot of us, our brains need organization and we need somebody else to guide us.

So I would love to be your friend in this journey.

You can can go to jessconly.com.

You can look in the show notes again.

You can go to my social media two page PDF.

Wake up Your soul and I pray it meets you right where you're at.

All right, friends, we have made it through the first episode.

I am incredibly grateful and humbled that you were here and that you made it to the end.

It is my honor to be your host.

But again, I'll probably say this a lot.

This is our podcast, so I would love to hear from you.

What interviews do you want?

What episodes would you like to hear?

Hit me up on social media.

I'm Jess A Connolly on Instagram and Facebook, also on threads.

Really having a lot of fun over there right now, and I'd love to hear what episodes do you want and where do you feel like you would love some encouragement and some insight about living fully awake?

Next up, we have book clubs coming.

We've got episodes about marriage, episodes with friends in my life.

We're going to talk a little bit about health and adrenals and hormones.

We're going to talk about cultivating intimacy with God.

We're going to talk about friendship.

I cannot wait for all of it.

Hey friends, to close out this first episode.

I'd love to just pray for you and pray for us, Father.

I thank you for every woman who has listened to this podcast.

I thank you for how much you love each of them.

I think that you want abundant life for us, that you want us to experience living fully awake in our minds, our bodies, our relationships, our souls.

And so we ask, Holy Spirit, be gentle, but complete.

Give us insight about where we need to wake up.

Give us insight about where we've been sleepwalking.

Give us insight about where you want to be generous and pour out just vision and favor and joy in our lives.

We want to use what we've got for your glory.

We want to work hard.

We want to take care of our people.

We want to love others.

Well, we want to shine your light in the world.

But also we want to be whole women who live fully awake to all that you have for us.

In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today, friends.

God's mighty and you, Let's go.