In this episode Gina has a conversation with Julianna Wakeling about God’s redeeming love in the midst of grief. Julianna shares about her journey of breaking free from religious expectations to live a “perfect life” into living by God’s grace. This vulnerable conversation explores her journey of parenting a son with special needs and how intimacy with God in that place led to her transformation. Julianna also shares the painful journey of losing her son and how she found hope and blessing in the valley of her deepest pain.
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Being Good
Gina:
Hi Juliana, I’m so excited you’re here! Thanks for being here.
Julianna:
Thanks for having me!
Gina:
We met because I was brought in during a transition to consult with a church who was going through losing their worship pastor, not for any horrible scandalous thing, they just moved on, and felt led by the Lord to move to Nashville. We’re in California, and you are the chair of the overseer board there.
So as I came in to come alongside the staff and the worship team and the congregation during this transition, that’s how we met. I’m just so grateful. I feel like you’re a huge gift and I’m grateful for your friendship.
I know we were talking earlier with how it’s never about just the thing you think it’s about. Even me coming to help, which I know I’ve been walking with Jesus long enough and been in ministry long enough to know it’s never just about what I can bring. It’s about what I can receive. You’re definitely one of the gifts that I’ve received here. So, thank you.
Julianna:
I feel the same.
Gina:
I really appreciate you. I just have so much respect for you as a woman of God and a believer, and just your walk with Him and your obedience to step into a position that, honestly in the church, is a hard one. There’s a lot more acceptance and affirmation of women in leadership roles now, but it’s still hard, and it still can be challenging.
To be in an overseer role and that’s a volunteer position, that’s a whole other thing. We’ll talk about that. So, I just have a lot of respect. I’ve watched you in that role and how you lead so dependent and surrendered, and really seeking the Lord’s will and you want Him to be the king.
I just have a lot of respect for how I’ve watched you lead, how I’ve watched you care for the staff. You’ve really shepherded it and cared for and loved them in a really powerful way. You don’t see that as often in churches from leadership.
So I just really appreciate that in you. We’ll probably talk about a lot of things, but maybe start with your story. Whatever you’re comfortable sharing.
Julianna:
I grew up in the Midwest, so I’m from St. Louis, Missouri. My parents divorced when I was two. So I was born in St. Louis, but we lived in Chicago. When my parents divorced, my mom moved us back to St. Louis. So I have never lived in the same state as my dad, except when I moved to California to go to college. But he lived in Northern California and I lived in California when I went to Cal Poly Pomona.
So my parents had been married and divorced quite a few times before I was in junior high. So that was really difficult as a kid and it can be hurtful to my parents if I talk about it. So it’s really interesting because they were the adults making the decisions, but I was the kid trying to navigate life through those decisions.
I never want to hurt my parents. So I’ve tried to say, “I’m okay,” but I don’t always think they understand. So I think out of that and watching the dynamics of my family, I had an older sister, she’s five years older than me, and she got in a lot of trouble. So I became this young woman who wanted to please my parents. I never wanted to disappoint anyone.
So I live my life in this way of trying to always do the right things, and to make sure I cared about the people around me and how my actions affected the people around me. Which is a great attribute, but it’s a really heavy one to carry when it becomes your identity. It became my identity. It was like, “A good girl does these things.”
Not that my sister was a bad girl, but my sister was making choices that hurt people around her. So I can have this conversation with my sister, “You ruffled the feathers and I smoothed them.” So that transferred into life. I was still the only sibling in my family that graduated from college. I took this older sibling role, but I was the baby in my immediate family.
It worked for me for a long time. I could always get the job I wanted. I could accomplish the things I wanted because I did the right things. I was very skeptical of marriage and having kids because my experience was that marriage doesn’t work, and you can’t trust men.
Because I saw my dad hurt my stepmom, and I saw my step dad hurt my mom. I saw a lot of pain. And so I was like, “If I never get married, I’m cool with that.” I never wanted to make choices that hurt somebody. So maybe kids are just not something that I will ever have, maybe I’ll just have a career.
It definitely wasn’t a woman that went to college to get her “Mrs.” degree. I got my degree in biology.
Gina:
I’ve never heard that before. The “Mrs. degree.” That is hilarious.
Julianna:
So when I met Dave when I was in college, I dated someone before I met Dave, for four years and we got engaged. The month before our wedding, after the invitations were out, I was like, “I don’t think I can do this.” And I called off my wedding. I established this perception with people that I was really strong, because most women wouldn’t have done that.
I guess to me it was like, “How stupid am I going to be if I go through this marriage? I’m going to end up divorced and I don’t want to be divorced.” So I just called it off. So I was working two jobs and going to school and I met Dave, who is now my husband.
When I met Dave, he had just gone through a divorce. Dave had a picture perfect family. His mom and dad had been married forever, and he got along with his sister, and it seemed all perfect, and I was very attracted to that stability.
Gina:
We have very similar upbringings, because I was the same way I grew up. I didn’t want anything to do with marriage. My parents were never married. It was a mess. All of my friends’ parents were divorced. “So, no thank you, I’m not going to do it.” When I met my husband and his parents had been married for like 30 years, and his dad still called his mom his bride. They had three kids.
Julianna:
It’s very attractive because we had never seen it done well. Dave was like an elder in the church, and he founded a prayer breakfast and he was doing great things with his relationship with God. Growing up Catholic, I didn’t see that as much.
Then I started dating this Protestant man and seeing his family. They don’t drink and they don’t cuss and they don’t smoke. I was kind of nervous for his family to meet me. I think because of that, I developed a belief early on in my faith, “Oh, a good Christian would do all these things.”
Gina:
It sounds very “works based.”
Julianna:
Yes, it was very work based, and it was appearance based. It wasn’t about my heart. My heart was hurting. I didn’t really recognize it, because I like those choices that were made. I was doing something different for myself. So it started building this place where I decided, “Well, when I get married and I have my own kids, I’m going to have a normal life.”
Because I’ve done all the right things, so everything will go well for me. Now I know Jesus in a new way. I wasn’t living a life that was surrendered to Jesus. It was more like, “Oh, I believe in Jesus and He forgets my sins and I just live my life.” It wasn’t like this. I want to know Him.
Gina:
It wasn’t an intimate relationship.
The Hardships of Life and Love
Julianna:
So when we had our first child… and he would have been 22 this year. We had Brendan and when I was pregnant he got diagnosed with a condition called hydrocephalus. When I gave birth to him, he was hospitalized and had brain surgery. He had seizures in the first couple years of his life, and it was just one thing after another. All the Christians would pray for us and Brendan would need surgery.
After four months, there was too much pressure on his brain, and he really needed surgery. We prayed and his seizures would get better, and then he’d start having them again. So I had that belief that, “I’m that good person that does all the right things, and if I know Jesus and act like Jesus, everything will go well for you.” The enemy had come in and solidified that belief in me.
Now I’m thinking, “I’m living life the best I can, and I have finally had a kid, and it’s tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, and let down after let down. So I got to this place of saying, “Jesus, if you are real, I either am really bad or you don’t love me.”
I know there’s a whole lot in between there, but I was in a really dark place and my kid was super hard. God’s like, “No, you don’t know me.” So I had to learn Him. I knew about Him, I knew Him in my head, and I knew Him in my heart. But the two were totally disconnected.
So I had Logan in 2004, he is 17 years old. When I had Logan, Brendan’s behavior got even worse because now he had competition. So life got really difficult. Around 2006 he became super difficult and he had all these behaviors and his frustration level was really high. When Logan was born, Brandon was four and a half. He didn’t walk, he didn’t talk.
He needed me, and it was like I had a baby. And I had another baby. I’ve never been an anxious person in my life, but during my pregnancy I was so anxious because I worked full-time at that point, and was still doing my career.
I thought, “How am I going to do this? How am I going to work full time and take this kid to therapy all the time? How am I going to take him to all his doctor’s appointments, and have a baby, with no sleep?
Julianna:
Brennan’s behavior got even worse. I tried to control him and he responded with, “You’re not going to control me.” He couldn’t help it. A lot of his behaviors couldn’t help. So I just got to this place where I hit such darkness and I didn’t like my kid. I felt like a terrible mother. I had so much anger because I couldn’t control anything.
My life fell out of control and I’ve waited my whole life to have this perfect family. So, my faith crumbled. It just kind of fell apart. It kept falling apart a little bit at a time with Brendan’s health issues, because I was fearful for his life. Then his behavior was making my life hell on earth. So now you’ve got this girl who’s grown into a woman, but her whole faith is built around being good and I hate my life.
I don’t like my kid. I would dream about running away from home. I would think, “I can’t do that to Dave.” I knew instinctively I can’t do this by myself and I didn’t want Dave to have to do that by himself. So it took me down a journey of, “Lord who are you? And if you’re real, you got to show me something, because right now I want to get off this journey. It just feels hard.” As a Christian you want to be a person that the world sees differently.
But as a human, when your life’s hard, you just don’t want to answer to anything else. So I was constantly in that struggle of knowing I should do things differently, but I didn’t have the capability because I didn’t know how to be transformed by God. I just tried to be obedient to Him.
Gina:
Let’s just stop you right there for a moment. There’s so much there. Well first of all, I want to thank you for being so vulnerable and transparent, because I think the shame alone stops parents who are in your shoes from being honest with themselves or anybody else. When you can’t find a safe place to speak about those things that you’re experiencing and feeling, then you aren’t going to be in a place to receive healing for those things, and it will destroy you.
All that turns into self hatred and everything, and the spiral continues. I love that you’re bringing out the difference between obedience and transformation. Obedience has to be a response to intimacy. If you start with obedience, you’re living in a sham, because then I need to prove something. I feel like that’s just the trap.
I feel like that’s the grandest lie of the enemy, right? To get us in that place where we somehow in our own strength can do something to make us worthy, which we deep down just know we can’t. So it’s a very vicious cycle. Then that becomes a barrier, a wall, a stronghold, that hinders our access to that intimate, loving, safe place, which is God’s presence.
Julianna:
Our fight is not against flesh and blood, it’s the darkness and principalities of this world. The enemy works through flesh and blood. He uses people around us. When we finally admit to someone, “I’m struggling, I don’t like my kid.” You’re in a Bible study and then someone says, “Well my kids are just my whole life.” I’ve never even thought I wanted kids.
Then that just furthers that lie, “You’re not a very good person, what mother would ever think. ‘I don’t like my kid right now.’ One time my mom was visiting, I was talking about a neighbor that favored one of her daughters over the other.
And I was like, “Mom, it’s just so hard to watch.” And she goes, “Well, you’re coming in kind of judgemental. I love all my kids the same. I have a special place in my heart for you.” And she said, “You’re the only kid that hasn’t broken my heart.”
She meant it in a beautiful way. Like, “You’ve always tried to do the right thing, and I see that in you.” So she at one point validates me, but at the same time it’s like, “Okay, so I have broken God’s heart.”
It’s so hard to see when you’re in it, why you’re struggling or why you tick the way you tick. Then as you walk with Jesus, Holy Spirit, and Father God, and he brings light into that, then it’s like, “Oh, that makes so much more sense for me.” I love my mom, my mom meant well. I do have a special connection with my mom, as I have always been her buddy. The enemy’s not really smart, he is just tricky.
He uses tricky stuff to keep you set apart from who you really are as God’s daughter. It becomes about performing for God. So now your heart doesn’t have a place to be transformed because it’s under that burden.
Gina:
When people talk about familiar spirits, that’s where that comes from. It becomes a very familiar space. It becomes this perceived safety because it’s familiar. So it’s this, “I’m just going to live here because this is what I know.” But again, that very thing we think is creating safety — is the very thing that’s keeping us from the healing that we so desperately need.
Transformed by God’s Redeeming Love
Gina:
So how did we go from there to that transformation? How did you get to a place where you could receive the love of God?
Julianna:
A couple different things happen. First, I go to Mountain View Church. Our pastor Todd was not afraid of bringing in things that were maybe a little more “Fringe of Christianity.” He let Dr. Charles Craft come to speak at our church, and he started speaking about spiritual warfare and how we have this enemy.
To be honest, I almost left Mountain when he came to speak, because growing up Catholic, first of all, you never talk about spiritual warfare. They do have exorcisms, but we don’t talk about it, and it’s something really scary. So because someone was making it normal to talk about demons and how we have an enemy that wants to steal, kill and destroy us. It just freaked me out.
I don’t like fear. If I’m afraid of something, I’m just like, “No, I’m not doing that.” Right around the same time, Gene Swanberg was going to Dr. Craft and she did some sessions with him and so she was starting bringing that into her healing ministry at our church. She also gave me this book by Francine Rivers called “Redeeming Love.” I identified with the main character in the book “Angel” and the shame she felt.
She’s the prostitute in the book. Michael Jose marries her. She does not know God. She knows about God, but it’s like this God that is in the sky that wants to smite you. Right. Yeah. He loves God, and he’s been transformed by him, and everything he does in his life, he’s totally obedient to God. But it comes from this love that transformed him.
I do not relate to that at all even though I’m obedient. All Angel sees is her failures and she has all this shame, and how she’s never gonna be someone God loves, like how He loves Michael Jose, because Michael Jose’s done all the right things.
So this internal judgment that I place on myself, this internal hatred I have towards myself for not being able to live up to this thing I’ve developed in me over the years. “Something’s wrong with me. I’ve never been a prostitute. . I haven’t sinned in a way that’s inexcusable. Right?”
And so to identify with a prostitute, and feel the same shame she feels in the book. literally, I was weeping. I was reading this book because I identified with her and I could feel her shame in my heart. Dave’s like, “Are you almost done reading that book? I just want you to be happy again.”
But I loved the book. I could not put it down and I re-read it because God was using something so interesting in this Christian romance novel to start my healing process.
Gina:
That’s such a beautiful demonstration of Jesus. There’s this loving, intimate way He meets us and uses, sometimes the most ridiculous things, to just kind of woo us in and bring us close. I love that a cheesy Christian romance novel is what he used to say, “I see you Juliana.”
Julianna:
Also, in the book Angel has a dream and she sees this man in white, and she’s like covered with sores and stuff. Then he’s walking towards her and all of her filth goes onto him, and she’s broken hearted. He wants to take all of her sores and all of her wounds and all of her dirtiness and all of her shame. He takes it on himself, but then he still becomes white again. I remember thinking as I read this book, “I want that.”
She accepts Jesus in the book and it starts to transform her. Then she uses her pain and her sin and her mistakes to actually help other women get out of prostitution. So it becomes, all of a sudden, wait… Jesus used her for His glory, and she was a prostitute.
Gina:
Well it’s not even just the identity of prostitutes, it’s that she uses her wounds. That’s redemption. So I think we underestimate the power and the depth and breadth of what redemption actually is. It’s not just being loved, it’s not just being saved, it’s not just being healed, but it’s also taking all of the ugly, and now utilizing that and transforming that. It’s actually changing it and redeeming it. That’s the thing that I think we sometimes lose sight of.
Julianna:
I’m gonna speak to that person that walked like me that was just trying to be obedient. So it started with the step that if he can even transform a prostitute, he can transform me. But we have to break through that sometimes. So I think when you look at the disciples you get to see a picture of transformation.
Jesus transformed Saul, who was murdering other Christians, he transformed a murderer. If He can do that, He is able to transform you. He takes a prostitute and makes her beautiful. I don’t even think poorly anymore of other people that have sinned worse than me. That’s how much God’s redeemed me. Right. But back then I had to read it like a sin scale. Like, “Oh, I haven’t done that.”
Do you think that comes from religion, that we do that to each other? Or is it our human nature? It’s that deep thing in us that only God can build that he puts there. So we long for him. Unless we’re willing to let Him fill it, we will always need to be validated. Then through that validation, now we could become like a Pharisee where they were like, “Well that can’t be the Messiah because He’s not doing all the right things.”
So you got to break down that pharisee within your own self and let God fill it. I love that because it’s what redemption truly looks like, but in the process, sometimes God even gives you that space to have to rank stuff so He can get to the broken.
The deep wound was I could never live up to my own expectations. So I felt unworthy of His love. So I kept trying to earn it and I had never been taught that I have this God that loves me so much, I can trust Him even with my worst mistakes. I had been taught to be obedient to Him. When you’re just trying to be obedient to a God that you have been taught wants to smite you.
Or you’ve developed in your own mind and then it’s reinforced by the way the world operates. It’s really hard to keep being obedient to somebody you don’t trust. So you try so hard and then when you get pooped out. Because I can’t live up to this expectation and I don’t even know if this guy’s really that great.
Check out the rest of this conversation: Partnering with Love & Finding God in Grief
Check out the Dwell Meditations
