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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Listen below to follow along at 25:25
Becoming love
Julianna:
This just feels hard. The real transformation started happening and the real redemption started happening. I was sitting on the floor like this, I’m facing the toilet, Brandon, please just go pee pee on the potty. And he’s screaming in my face and I’m like, “I don’t want to do this anymore. Lord, I just don’t want to do this.” I don’t want to be a special needs mom.
He’s like, “Juliana, quit asking me to take it away and ask what you need to get through the day. I’m not gonna take it away. So you can keep fighting me and it’s going to feel like this or you can try it my way.” So I only gave in out of desperation. Then he’s like, “You’re so angry. Anger’s not who you are. You’re my daughter. Love is who you are. Give me your anger and let me turn it into love.”
So externally, I’m now going, “I love you so much, buddy. If you just go pee pee on the potty mommy will play with you inside.” I’m subduing, I’m surrendering, I’m laying at the feet of my heavenly Father, in my anger and saying, “I am not anger anymore, I am love.”
So I’m practicing love. Well, the anger was up here, the love was at rock bottom. Eventually as I trusted Him, He was going to do something and I was obedient because He’s like, “You have to learn to trust me. I don’t care about your obedience. I only want you to trust me.”
I start being obedient to what He’s asking me to do, and I start asking for what I need to get through the day. The anger starts to diminish and the love starts to grow, and I start to change. I don’t feel so angry anymore. I don’t feel so mad that this is what he’s asked me to carry, and that love starts to diminish.
Gina:
So I want to back up real quick, because it sounded like you were contradicting and you weren’t. I want to bring some clarity. So you’ve lived this life of just trying to be obedient, and do the right thing, but by obedience, that, “Be a good person.” You’re going to cross all the ts, dot all the i’s, here’s the list of what a good Christian looks like. So I’m going to do my best in my own strength to do that.
I’ve been successful at that and yet here I am. So you’re in this place of desperation. You’re in this place of, “I can’t do this anymore.” God starts having a conversation with you, “I’m not going to take this away. Ask me what you need.” So you’re having this rest, you’re wrestling with Him, and finally He says “You’re angry” and He leads you. Now He’s asking something of you. So this kind of obedience is totally different.
This is obedience to the heart of the Father. And He is saying, “Will you trust me?” because you made the statement, “I don’t care about your obedience,” but this is a different type of obedience. The motivation is different.
So now you’re living out of the invitation of what obedience actually is, which is excruciating but transformative, and that does require that trust. You haven’t been in a place of trusting the Father, and that He’s good. You were like, “I don’t feel love right now, but I hear your voice and I’m going to respond.
Julianna:
I guess my obedience before that where He is like, “I don’t care about your obedience.” It’s like, “I don’t care if you get up and do your quiet time. I don’t care if you pray. I don’t care if you go to church. I don’t care if you go to Bible study. All I want you to do is come to me. I don’t want any of the outward stuff anymore.”
Gina:
“I don’t want your burnt offering or sacrifices.”
Julianna:
It’s that thing where, “I desire mercy more than sacrifice.” That became real to me. Like what does that even mean? He’s not looking for my sacrifice, and he was teaching me to have mercy for myself, because my inner voice of living up to what my expectations were for myself, that was destroying me.
Gina:
Well, you’re becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. Cause everything you’re afraid of becoming, you’re becoming. Everything you’re trying to do in your own strength is just fulfilling the very thing that you’re the most fearful of, and here you are.
Love that Transforms
Julianna:
That thing you’re like, Paul says, “Why do I do the things I don’t want to do, but don’t do the things I want to do.” It’s like waging war. That’s what I was living out inside me. So when God’s saying, “Trust me, trust who I am, trust who I say you are, you’re not anger, you’re love.
Partner with love.” Now I’m partnering with Him. It becomes less about obedience and more about partnering, like walking in the Spirit. So I just started responding to what He was asking me to do.
So Brennan would be screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, and I’d be kissing him, walking him upstairs when I started going, “I love you so much. I want to spend time with you, but I can’t spend time with you if you scream, as soon as you stop screaming, Mommy’s going to hang out with you.”
He wants that mommy. He wants to change his behavior for that Mommy, I’m not demanding his obedience. He’s responding to that, like I’m responding to the Father, now it starts transforming our family.
I mean there’s a deep self hatred that came out in this good girl. So I started thinking, where is that coming from? That’s when I could invite God into that. It’s been a long process. If the enemy wants to come at me, he’s going to sneak in through guilt and shame about me not doing the right thing.
I think that’s like a man after God’s own heart. David was a man after God’s own heart. I think I’m a woman after God’s own heart because I want to do the right things. I want to be righteous, I want to be good. Those are good things. But what’s the driving force behind it? Is that the enemy driving me to try and perform for God? So now I can’t live up to my own expectations.
Or is it “No, I love you Father so much. I just want to be your daughter, and I want to be good for you.” It comes from a good place that old Juliana’s dead. God sees me through the lens of Jesus. It’s not about doing whatever you want either, because He is inviting you into that transformation.
I can see why people just go back to the behavior modification program in Christianity. I think in some weird way it feels easier, but it’s really not, and it doesn’t fulfill us. It doesn’t make us walk like sons and daughters. I think it’s when we’re constantly fighting, are we a pharisee or are we going to walk like Jesus? It’s like that constant battle.
Gina:
Easier is probably not the right word, but I think if you just stay in the workspace, performance, behavior modification Christianity. I can have a scorecard and I can have winners and losers and I can self-protect. I don’t have to be vulnerable. I just need to check all the boxes.
So in some ways it is easier, because to go the way of the cross, and actually accessing everything that Jesus died for, which is that invitation to go through the veil into the Holy presence of God in that place of ultimate safety, but also it’s that exposure. It’s the most vulnerable of places, but also the most loving of places. It’s a scary place, but it’s a beautiful place. It’s a powerful place, and that’s the place that brings transformation.
Taking up Your Cross
Julianna:
It’s, “For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.” Then He says, “Pick up your cross daily and follow me.” It’s like we have to get to the place that we’re going to be stripped bare and hung on the cross. But out of that, look at what we receive.
I think that healing and going to those places within us is scary. As a believer, we get to that place where God’s inviting us into the garden, and when we come out on the other side where our journey’s going to be difficult, but then we’re going to rise. People get to the garden and it’s like, “Yeah, I’m going to put down the cup.” It’s just scary. Right?
I think throughout our journey we are all going to have a garden we walk though. So many moments where we’re going to ask Him to take the cup. I mean I was basically doing that in the bathroom with Brendan. And he’s like, “No, I’m not going to do it that way. You need to lay down your will of not wanting to be a special needs mom. Now are you gonna join me? Are you gonna fight it?”
That eventually would’ve destroyed my marriage even because I was so angry. I was tired and I just wanted to do it God’s way at that point. It probably came from that obedience, but it was really because He was calling me into love. So life changed around the time he was 10. I mean, it was still hard.
I’m not gonna lie. There would be times where I’d slip back into old patterns, but overall we had a good family, and Logan had a lot of anxiety. Going through inner healing, I realized the one time I was anxious in my life is when I was pregnant with him. So I learned through the inner healing journey, and then I started doing inner healing ministry with other people.
It’s all about taking authority, like taking back our authority in Christ. I confessed my sin of anxiety, I can confess that I had partnered with anxiety. So I started breaking anxiety off my own kid, because I was responsible for that. Because when I was carrying him I was walking around anxiety ridden. So I started recognizing these places. So you know, I did a lot of work on behalf of my family to try and take back what the enemy had stolen.
Learning to Rest
Julianna:
I was starting to experience the goodness of God and seeing all the blessings and seeing the transformation and seeing Him show up in the things that we invited Him into. I started doing this thing in 2016 where I go, “Lord, what’s the word you have for me this year? I want to partner with you in that.” And for three years in a row, it was like, “Oh, I want you to learn to rest.” You’ve known me long enough to know that’s not my default. I got a lot of energy. You walked with me recently.
Gina:
I did. Is that what you call it? That was walking? Okay!
Julianna:
Or torture, whatever. So the third year He gave me rest. I defaulted to that old nature of letting God down, I’m not learning my lesson. And He’s like, It’s not a physical rest, you’re missing what I have for you. I want you to learn to rest like I do.” I want you to be Jesus in the storm. You can take a nap when life is chaotic.
“It’s a spiritual rest. I’m giving it to you three times in a row because I want you to be really great at it.” It’s not a failure. So again, I would have to work through that old nature wanting to come up. We have this women’s retreat meeting at the end of 2018 and I’m sitting there and they’re talking about rest and I’ve been practicing the presence of God, and resting with Him for three years.
So I hear Him go, “Juliana, are you even going to be open to going?” because I’m sitting there curled up in the ball, like I had to physically sit up in my chair and put my legs on the floor and be open. By the end of the meeting I’m like, “Shoot, I think I’m going to have to go to this retreat. I don’t want to go to this retreat. I feel bad because I love all these ladies. They’re all my people. So it’s so funny that I don’t want to go.
Gina:
I totally understand that, I was the same way with women’s ministry, just everything about it was like, “ugh.” When I was in my twenties and before I had kids, I just had this image of women with scrunchies in their hair trading recipes and doing dried flower arranging or something.
I was like, “No.” Then the Lord in His sense of humor and the way He does, has me start leading worship in women’s ministry, and teaching and all that stuff. And then of course God uses that to bring a lot of restoration and healing
Julianna:
It’s redemption. So I went to that meeting and then Cassie said, “I really want you to speak. Would you be willing to speak about finding peace in change?” So I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll think about it.” So I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to get out of it unless I was going to just not listen, being surrendered to God instead of myself.
But I started journaling and journeying back like all God had done in my life through Brendan. And Brendan had turned 18 in 2018. So we were moving from raising a special needs child to raising a special needs adult. We were getting a conservatorship so I could make decisions for him. I was in a season of change, because now it’s not natural that I get to make decisions for him. Now I’m stepping into this new role.
I’m not just his mother, I’m his advocate. So it was a difficult transition. All his doctors were going to start changing his program at school. He was going to have to transition out of the school district into adult transition. So I’m in change and trying to find peace and really sleep like Jesus in this storm of change.
Check out the rest of this conversation: Finding God in Grief & God’s Redeeming Love
Check out the Dwell Meditations
