Faith Over Fear: Jenna Schutt’s Survival Story

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Dorsey Ross Show, where real faith meets real stories. Hosted by Dorsey Ross, here we share encouraging and inspiring stories. And today, we're diving into another incredible testimony of overcoming trials and experiencing the faithfulness of God. Whether you're facing your own battles or just need some encouragement, you're in the right place. So let's get started. Because your story matters, and God's grace is bigger than any obstacle.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

So today's guest is a true testament to resilience, faith, and the power of using joy, even in the hardest battles. At first thirty thirty years old were two young babies at home. She was diagnosed with a rare, uncurable disease. What followed was intense dumb shell transplant and a five life. Doctors provided the medicine. But what carried her the darkest night was developed and now teaches others the joy reflex and spiritual response that turns fear into faith and pain into purpose. She's a former cardiac nurse, a mama, a transit survivor author, and a host of her own podcast, Faith We're gonna shoot. The goalie you flex.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, you know, you started great. You kind of already told quite a bit of my story, which I appreciate. I just reiterated a little bit with you that I was 30 years old when I was diagnosed with a very rare, incurable bone marrow disease, very similar to a cancer. And at that time I had two children, both still in diapers. I had just had my second child after, um, and then almost immediately after was diagnosed. First, it was just in the dormant stages, but then it quickly advanced to the aggressive form. And so then I started IV chemotherapy. I did about eight rounds the first time I had the chemotherapy and I was in total remission. And then a few months later, it came back aggressive again. So I tried an oral chemotherapy, which was not successful. And so we pivoted and went to an IV chemotherapy, which helped the symptoms of my body, but it did not affect the bone marrow and the amount of the disease that was progressing inside of the bone marrow. So that's when we had to make the decision to move forward with the stem cell transplant.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

And how are you now? And what where did f where did fake play a role in your time with fighting this? Uh yes.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

So I am, I had the transplant, excuse me, at 35 years old. Now I'm 37, so I'm two years post-transplant, and I am doing much better with the symptoms of the disease that I was dealing with. Now I am living with graph versus host disease, which just happens when the stem cell transplants, donor cells, which were my brother's cells, try to fight against my cells, the host cells. And so that can appear in a lot of different ways. Mine specifically has been with my liver and with my eyes. I have to wear these really, really hard plastic scleral contact lenses that help to hold water or contact solution against my eye because I don't produce tears anymore. And that causes a lot of inflammation and a lot of uncomfortable eye issues that comes with that. So I am still dealing with that. I'm in what they call the survivorship phase of treatment, which is dealing with those graph versus host symptoms. And because the disease is considered incurable, I am still on a form of oral chemotherapy for at least three to five years, possibly longer, depending on what the scans look like and the symptoms and the labs are trending. Now, to answer your question as far as faith, I really feel like the Lord started showing me how to keep faith, peace, and joy during that time. When I was first diagnosed, having such small children, you really don't look at it as what experiences you're going to miss personally. I was seeing everything through the view of what I would miss in my children's lives. So their first steps or their first words, their first dance, their first graduations, you know, their college, all of those things. So fear really tried to attack me and attack my mind, especially with all the what ifs. And I really had to step up with my faith and really have the Lord show me and seek the Lord with how I can keep the faith during this time? How can I keep peace and keep joy with all of these circumstances that are scary and are true because I didn't deny the circumstance I was in, but I didn't want that to shape the atmosphere of my mind.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

What is the green you flex and why do most people default to fear instead of faith in hyper moments?

SPEAKER_02 5:34

I am also a nurse, which I know you said that a little bit at the beginning, but I am a former cardiac nurse. And so when I talk about why people default to fear, I always like to try to go to the natural reason why we do that. And that is just survival. It is our body's natural instinct when we hear those words about you have an aggressive form of this disease, or this disease is rare and incurable, or you're gonna need chemotherapy, you're going to need a stem cell transplant. And especially hearing that the aggressive form of the disease had a survival rate of only two to four years, and I've survived it more than once. So when you hear those things, your body's natural response is fear. It is that fight or flight response that either wants you to run as far away as physically possible from this situation, or it wants you to fight back. And although that is completely a natural response, it's what happens up here that can become an issue. And that's when those thoughts of what ifs can pop up, those thoughts of maybe I'm not going to survive this, or maybe my children are going to grow up without me being there anymore. Maybe I'm not going to live through this. And if you allow yourself to go towards those worst-case scenarios all the time, what happens is your neural pathways get used to that. And that's where they're going to go. And in the medical world, we call that neuroplasticity, the ability for you to reshape the pathways of your mind. And so what the joy reflex is, in and of itself, is a framework that helps show people how they can train their brain to choose that faith, joy, and peace as a reflex instead of their last resort. So to make that something that you're going to go towards when you have these circumstances that come up. And maybe it is not like what I dealt with was a very difficult health experience, but it could be many other things. It could be relationship issues, it could be financial issues, it could be the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, any of those things that create those situations in your mind, those circumstances in your mind is where this joy reflex can come in.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Now you had mentioned that the life expenses for what you had was two to four years and still have is two to four years, and you've you already fought it twice. Where is that? Are you beating the odds of what the doctor expected? Or what is that? Where are you at now, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Yes. So I'm seven years from diagnosis. So the two to four years, I've almost doubled that lifespan. But also I've also faced the aggressive form more than once. So I'm not sure where that puts me with statistics, but it puts me kind of as an outlier out here, I think, in the middle of kind of no man's land. As far as the statistics, as in a total for the disease in and of itself, it is extremely rare. And by that, I mean in the last 20 or so years, the biggest studies have only shown about seven patients with this particular disease. And then from there, the people that have had a stem cell transplant and have tried the chemotherapies and have beat the aggressive form twice would be less than that. And that is, again, globally within the last 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

No, you said, no, you and I have things in common. And the doctors, you know, when I was born, the doctor told my parents he's not gonna survive. You know, he won't be brain dead. And then other doctors said, well, he won't live past the age of 18. And here I am, you know, double that, almost triple that now of what, you know, the doctors said. As we as we both know, with God all things are possible, and we don't know what his plan is.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

And if I can ask you a question, what have you learned about faith through hearing all these testimonies and through living through your own that you find helpful?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

You know, keep on going, keep pushing forward. You know, don't give up.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Yeah. Yes, I love that verse in Galatians that says that we will reap if we faint not. You know, it tells us not to give up. It tells us that you will get to where you are going if you just don't give up. And I would say a lot, I don't know if you like movies, but I would say about finding Nemo, she says, just keep swimming, just keep swimming. And I would tell myself that, and I would tell others that would ask how I'm doing. And I said, Well, I'm just, I just keep swimming. I just keep going and don't give up. So I think that's a great perspective. And if you have that mindset of, I'm not going to give up. So how can I live in the circumstances that I'm in in the best way possible with the best atmosphere of my mind? That is where that joy reflex comes in. And that's where I'm trying to teach my story and how the Lord showed me those things through my own experience and how that is accessible to other people too.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

And how did the going you flick flirt take hate? Where did it come from?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

It really came from me saying all the time, the joy of the Lord is my strength. I remember there was a specific time in my journey where I was so weak. I had to use a cane to get around because I had had some very severe infections. I had had a bowel perforation and I had had a blood clot up here in my jugular and my neck. And because of those two things, I was in the hospital for a very long time. And you might know too that when you're in the hospital, the longer you're in there, the more weak you can become because you're in the bed a lot. You're not really working your muscles as much as you probably should be. Even though I tried, it is a whole different thing when you're that sick and not able to move around as much as you want. So I ended up being very, very weak. And as I said, I was using a cane. And where we were staying in Omaha, which is where my hospital was that I had my transplant at, I had a Airbnb or a rental house that had a lot of stairs and it had a lot of hilly areas. And I remember that I really wanted to get stronger, but I was just so physically weak. And I remember needing help to get up out of the couch or get up when I was using the restroom. And I was not able to do that without using all of my muscles and all of my strength. And I remember saying over and over and over again that the joy of the Lord is my strength and the joy of the Lord is my strength. And every time something was hard, I would keep saying that. And I would keep saying, I'm strong in the Lord and the power of his might. And I would repeat those verses over and over and over again. And what that did is that trained my brain to go there instead of thinking, I can't do this. This is too much. This is too hard. I'm too weak. I trained my brain to say that first. And in Nehemiah, when it says the joy of the Lord is your strength, it is talking not just about up here. It's talking about a spiritual infusion of strength and endurance. And I truly believe that me doing that was the joy reflex before I even had a name for it. I was training my brain to go back to what the Lord's word said about my situation instead of what it felt like or what it looked like from the outside or from my perspective.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

What does training degree reflex look like daily for people who may want to do this?

SPEAKER_02 13:34

That's a great question. And that's something I talk a lot about in my monthly devotionals, is that there is a framework that you can train this yourself, no matter what your situation is. So sometimes, like I said, it's not always a health thing. It could be grief, it could be financial issues, it could just be anxiety or depression or those things that don't have a concrete health issue, but it could be something else. And the framework that I talk about there, and I also talk about it in my book that I've been writing, is a three-part method. And that three-part method is really about not denying the truth that you're in. So what is it that you're dealing with? For me, it was a health issue that was very clearly easy to see because you could tell by looking at me there was something going on because I was very weak. You could see all of my bones and I was very sunken in everywhere because I had lost so much weight. I was having to use a cane. I had liver failure. So I had ascites, so my stomach looked like I was eight months pregnant because it was just so much fluid that was filling up. And so that's that was the reality that I was in. And so the first thing I I encourage people to do is not to deny the reality, but to say, okay, this is the situation that I'm in, but I don't want my situation to determine how I'm going to live the atmosphere of my mind. So the next thing that I encourage people to do is find those verses that speak to their situation. So, like what we were just talking about with me being really weak, I would say, I'm strong in the Lord and the power of his might. Or I would say, um, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Or if it's just for healing, I would say, I will live and not die. All those Bible verses. For other people, it might be that God has an abundant supply for me, or people that are having difficult time doing something might say, I'm more than a conqueror. Those Bible verses that speak about who and what we are in the Lord. And then just keep taking the next faithful step. You don't have to take the whole staircase. You don't have to conquer it all at once, but you can do the next thing. And sometimes the next thing is just saying a prayer. It's opening your Bible and reading those verses out loud to yourself again. And that's one thing that I think is really important when your mind is going a million miles a second and you're trying to just catch those thoughts. The best and easiest way to stop that is to speak something true out loud. Because if you think about what do you do when you're speaking, you're gonna stop what's going on up here and you're gonna have to think about what's coming out of here. And if what's coming out of your mouth is what the Lord says about you, is what's true about you, is what you want to see about yourself, that's what's gonna be up here. And then you can start retraining those neural pathways to go towards that instead of those fearful pathways that it's been going.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

You know, obviously we're all we're all human. We and we all have, you know, for those that, you know, believe in Christ and have a relationship with him, you know, we have that spiritual side in us, but yet we're still human and we, you know, whether it, you know, like you're saying, whether it's health, whether it's, you know, you know, uh financial, whether it's a god loss or whatever, you know, we we fear, we panic, you know, about what's happening now, what's gonna what's the next step? You know, is it hard to retrain or, you know, go from the panic mold to, hey, you know, everything's going to be okay if I focus on, you know, the word of God and I focus on Bible versions.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

I don't want to say that it's hard, and I don't want to say that it's easy either. I think that it takes dedication and a commitment to wanting to see a better atmosphere in your own mind. Sometimes for me personally, I can tell you of my own experience when I was battling those anxious thoughts. It would be all day of having to redirect my mind to what the Lord said about me, or I would play worship music, or I would play my pastor's teachings, or go to church, or if your church has a corporate prayer time, or call a faith friend to get some faith encouragement, or read a godly devotional. And those things would help me redirect my mind to what I wanted it to go to. But it does take time and it does take effort. And I don't want anyone to think that this was something that I just snapped my fingers and changed because it was not like that. I had to take the time and dedicate myself to every time my brain tried to go somewhere I didn't want it to go, I had to redirect it. And that did take time. And it took longer than I would have wanted it to. But I never did give up and I kept going. And I will be completely honest that my mind still tries to go places that I don't want it to go sometimes when I have doctor's appointments or lab results that I don't like how they look. But I still go back to that same framework of okay, this is where I'm at, but this is what the Lord says about me. And I'm just gonna do the next thing that I can do, which is to say this Bible verse out loud and to meditate. The word says to meditate on those things. So meditate on that word about me. So yes, we are all human. We all have somewhere that we are trying to get that is probably not where we're at right now. And those are human experiences. And sometimes that takes more work than what we want, but it is worth it. The work to get your mind free of that bondage of fear is worth it.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

How can someone, you know, in the sick of crisis start this retraining?

SPEAKER_02 19:32

The quickest and easiest way to start that training is just to start. Just take the next faithful step. You don't have to try to conquer it all in one day. Find one Bible verse that applies to your situation. I know some people will just find every single Bible verse and they'll have like a notebook of Bible verses, and it's like, that is awesome, but that's a lot to look at, and that's a little overwhelming when you're already dealing with like all these thoughts that are flying in every direction at yourself. So pick one or two, and then just try saying those over and over and over again, and just focus on the one or two that you can say and then you can remember, and that you will get to the place where you will know them without having to look at them. And that's the first thing I encourage people to do is just pick one or two and just focus on those. Focus on the next step, not the whole staircase, not where you're going to be in six months from now, but just focus on right now. And that's what you can do. That's something anybody can do. Everybody has an app on their phone with the Bible, or everybody has a Bible in their home and they can go find a Bible verse. You can, you know, get on your computer and search what Bible verses are good for, and then just say whatever your ex whatever your experience is and let it show you some Bible verses that would be an encouragement to you. And pick one or two that you feel like in here, not up here, but you feel like in here is speaking to you, speaking to that spirit that you were saying, that we have Jesus inside of us. What is speaking to this part of you of those Bible verses? And pick that one and speak that one when that mind starts to go in different directions.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

With your medical knowledge, when the when do your medical knowledge collide with real fear?

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Immediately. Immediately. Because when you have that medical knowledge, I am taking care of patients who have passed away from losing their battle with cancer and with chemotherapy. I I've been there, I've taken care of them. I've been the nurse on that other side. And then to be the patient in the bed who's being taken care of, that fear tries to come immediately. You see those patients, you replay those conversations that you've had to have with family members in your own mind. You replay the statistics or the lab results or what the doctor said about this, or what the doctor said about that, or what this looks like, or what that. Looks like. And you remember taking care of patients that are similar to that same situation. And then if you're not careful, it's very easy to start putting you there instead of where you are now or instead of what the Lord says about you. And so it is definitely an interesting experience. I will say that I am glad for my medical experience because I've had to be a very strong advocate for myself on several occasions. And you probably maybe have experienced that too, have had to stand up for yourself and be an advocate for yourself. And that medical training has helped in that respect, but it has also had its challenges with, like you said, knowing too much almost sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

What did you learn about how fear actually affects the body and mind in crisis during your ill illness?

SPEAKER_02 22:50

For me, what happened in my life is that I would have a report or a doctor would come in and say something, and my mind would just hyperfixate on that one negative thing that he said. And he could have said 10 other good things, but my mind would just automatically go to that one negative thing because again, your mind wants to go to survival. Your body is meant to want to live and survive. So your brain is going to go to that one thing that could keep that from happening and focus on that. And that is all just your brain trying to survive, trying to keep you alive. And I think that when we recognize that our body is meant to want to keep us alive. And so it is going to try to go that direction unless we make it go somewhere else. And how you make it go somewhere else is by that training. It's by repeatedly going back to what you want your body to see, like what you want your mind to think of. And I've had doctors tell me that don't necessarily have any spiritual connection with me on that level, but they have said that they have seen people who speak positively over their life and over their condition. They have seen that help those people more times than they can count. And that that is not a spiritual thing. They don't have that spiritual connection necessarily, but they've just seen that work. They've seen that in real life, in real time, that when you speak the right things, it makes a difference.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah. Why is waiting to feel better to run strategy? And what should people do instead when they feel overwhelmed?

SPEAKER_02 24:33

When you feel overwhelmed, I think the first thing that you have to do is strip everything down to the bare minimum. So what is going on right now? What is the overwhelming? Is it because of the diagnosis? Is it because you're looking at your bank account if it's a financial issue? Is it because you're looking at someone who maybe you loved have passed away and you're looking at pictures? And it's just overwhelming you with thoughts and with feelings and with emotions. And really it's stripping that down to what is this that is causing this? Is it grief? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? Is it financial hardship? Is it like this stressful burden that I just feel like I can't get it off my shoulders? So recognizing what that is, and then to say, okay, now I recognize what it is. Let's say it's fear. So then I'm gonna go back to what the word says about fear. I'm gonna go back to what it says. And it says, the Lord has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. So I'm gonna start saying that over myself because I've recognized that fear is what is trying to cause this overwhelming feeling. And I need to take control of what is the root cause of that and go towards what I want to see. So I want to remind myself that in the Lord, I have a sound mind. And that's what the Lord has for me. And so that's what I'm gonna go towards.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

You talk about angering in truth. What does that actually look like in a real everyday moment?

SPEAKER_02 26:02

To me, truth is always going to be God's word. That is our truth. That is our rock that we stand on, right? We stand on the rock of Jesus and we stand on his words and what he said and what the Lord has for us in his words. That's kind of like the Lord's blueprint for us. What can work for us? It's going to work for you. It is there for you. It is life, right? And so to me, anchoring will always be going back to his word, anchoring in his truth, anchoring in those things that he said about us. So a real life situation is let's say you have a near miss and you're in the car and you're driving and something happens and you almost get in an accident. So, first thing you're gonna do is probably your body is gonna feel that fight or flight response because something almost happened that could have been detrimental to you or to your body. And so the first thing that probably will happen is your heart rate's gonna go up, your breathing is gonna go up, your blood pressure is gonna go up because your body just experienced this, right? So everything is going up because your body is trying to figure out if we're going to fight or if we're going to run away as fast as we can. But we're in a vehicle, so we are going to just stay where we're at, right? So you have just experienced this intense emotional thing and your body is reacting to it. So the first thing you have to do is kind of going back to that framework is say, okay, this happened. I almost got in an accident, but then you're going to go to what's true, right? But I'm safe and I'm okay and I am divinely protected. That's what I would say over myself. I'm divinely protected and I am highly favored and I'm okay. And I'm going to keep going with my day and do what I need to do now. So then I would take the next step, which should be just keep going and just keep reminding myself that I'm safe and I'm okay. And I would say that out of my mouth and not just try to fix up here because I think a lot of people think that you can fix thoughts with thoughts, and you really can't. You've got to interrupt that thought where it's at, stop it, and replace it with something that you want to be up there. And the easiest way to do that is just speak something out loud because that automatically is going to have to stop what's going on up here, and you're going to have to focus on what's coming out of your mouth.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

How do you balance faith, wisdom, and medical reality when faith can come in serious or uncertain?

SPEAKER_02 28:25

I think that there's kind of a line where both of those live. So again, knowing the medical reality of what they're saying about me, but also knowing what the Lord has for me. So I have to acknowledge both sides there, right? So this is what the doctor's saying, this is the medical reality. I know the statistics, I know the lab reports, I know what my bone marrow is saying, what the PED scan is saying, all of those things. And I know those things, but I also know over here that the Lord says that I'll live and not die, that by his stripes I'm healed, that he's not giving me a spirit of fear, that I'm strong in the Lord and the power of his might. And he says all of those things about me too. So what is it that I'm going to focus on? I am going to choose to focus on what the Lord says about me. Now, that doesn't mean I deny the reality of this. And I say this a lot because a lot of times I think that people look at faith and they want to say that if they're going to be in faith, that they can't go to the doctor or they can't go and do medical things, or they can't go and do medical treatments. And I think if anybody is a testament that you can have faith and medicine together, it's this girl because I had faith, but I also did the chemotherapy and I did the stem cell transplant and I did oral chemotherapy and I'm still doing it. And I like to say that faith and medicine does not have to be an either or. It should be an and also. There is no judgment there. There is no condemnation there. If you need to go do stuff in the medical side of things, the natural side of things, please go do that. Please go to the doctor if you need to go to the doctor. That is not against your faith to do that. But please still speak in faith, still be speaking those things, still be knowing what the Lord says about you and have that be what your brain goes to instead of the what ifs.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

And you know, as we mentioned earlier, you have two young children at the time of your illness, and you know, and you as you were navigating that, how did how did you navigate being a mom to two young children and facing a life-threatening diagnosis and treatment? It was tough.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

I I will not say otherwise. It was very tough. I'm very thankful that my husband is amazingly supportive. My mom is supportive, and my in-laws are very supportive also to help with watching the kids when I couldn't, or if I was in a treatment or something they were very willing to pick up and take over when I needed to. But I stay home with my children. I now I homeschool my children. I've homeschooled them since they started preschool. So it hasn't been what I would call easy. It's been a challenge and it's been something that we have been growing through. I won't say that we have just been kind of been a silver platter of everything's gonna be easy because this and this and this. But I will say that we have figured it out. And we have people in our life that love us and care about us and want to help us out. And that has been a tremendous blessing. I have an amazing church community, I have an amazing family. And so that has really helped me. But I think uh one of the biggest things is I personally have had to let go of the mom guilt that says I'm not doing enough, that says that this diagnosis and me being gone for treatment is hurting them. Because I think that moms deal with a lot of mom guilt over a lot of things. And then being in a position where I was either going to choose between my life and getting this life-saving treatment and be away from them for a while, or not do it and be with them all the time and potentially not make it to see them when they're older. And so it's like I had to combine those two things of these things are both true. I need this treatment and I'm gonna have to leave them for a little bit to be able to do this because when you do a stem cell transplant, you have to be close to your facility, which is two hours away for a hundred days. And I didn't get to see my kids except through FaceTime for almost that entire period, except for maybe two or three times. And that was tough. That's tough on a mom when you have young, young children. Um, and I had to make that decision and I had to let go of that mom guilt. And I had to continuously remind myself that I am doing what needed to be done and what I had peace about. And that's one thing that my my personal pastor says all the time is that you need to follow that peace, follow peace that's in here. And me and my husband both had peace about all of the treatments that I did and all of the chemos and the stem cell treatment. And we had to follow that piece, and part of that is letting go of some of that mom guilt that tried to come.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Obviously, you're you're good and were young at the time. How what how did you explain to them, you know, you've been away for so long, you know, what was that like?

SPEAKER_02 33:33

I didn't much. I didn't much explain to them. When I was diagnosed, my youngest was literally a baby. I mean, like a baby baby, like four, four, six months old. And my oldest was 18 months old. So they were like very little. So we really didn't explain much to them. At this point, they are nine and seven. So they're old enough to start understanding a little bit more. And so there's been more explaining now. But as they were little and I was gone with the stem cell transplant and all those things, we would just tell them that I was at the doctor, that I was going to see the doctor, I had a medical appointment. And it wasn't that we were trying to hide it from them. But I feel like my responsibility as a mom is to shield them from things that they don't need to know right now. And I think that in my situation, that would have brought more confusion and fear to them when nothing that they were going to do in that situation was going to change it by them knowing.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

And they were and they were too young at the time, anyway, to fully understand what was going on in in a way.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

Right. They were. And I remember one time my mom was with my children and we were facetiming and I was in the hospital. And so I always bring my own pillow to the hospital because I just don't like their pillows and I want to be able to actually sleep. You probably know how that is. It's just like you can already not sleep as it is. And so I had my pillow there and I was FaceTiming my children with my mom sitting there. And my oldest child, who was starting to get a little bit catching on, was like, Mom, why do you have uh your pillow at your doctor appointment? And I remember I had to, you know, kind of like think quick. And I said, Well, I just in case I need to rest, I need my pillow here. And so it was as they got older, they they got more and more knowledge and they were able to hold more and more of that.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Looking back, what would you say to the mom who's in the middle of a hog season right now and feels like she has to hold?

SPEAKER_02 35:40

I would say that if you are a mom that was in the same position that I was in and I'm still in sometimes, because I still get infusions, I still have infusions every other week that pulls me away from my kids. Just know that you can let go of the mom guilt. That if you are doing what you can in the season, that you can be okay with that and know that your love for them is still going to shine through this season. Whether or not that means there are going to be instances where you may not be there 100% of the time because you're taking care of yourself, but you are worth it. And your worth is not tied to your productivity, it's not tied to what you do for them. But your love and your worth is there. No matter what you can do in this season, you're worth that.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

If people wanted to or maybe wanted to learn more about the way you flip, where can they look that up and learn more about you and your own story?

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Yes. So I have a website. It's just my first name, last name.com. So Jenna Shoot.com, no caps, just gentish.com. And I have the sign up for the monthly devotional, and that's free. And then at the very bottom, I have all of my social links. So you're more than welcome to follow me on any of my social links if you want to keep up with me or follow along with me and get more information. Also on there, I do have pictures of my journey as I was going through all of the different treatments in the chemo and a little bit more about that season. If people are interested, I would love to talk to them more.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

As I always like to, I always like to ask my guest to give a word of encouragement to my audience as well.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

Yes. So my word of encouragement would be that you are capable of training your brain and training your thoughts and your mind to reflexively go towards good things. That is possible for you, no matter where you are or what you're in, or what season you're in right now. And the only reason that I can say that personally is because I have been there. I've been sitting in the chemo chair during COVID. I have been in the room to get a stem cell transplant when I was only 35 years old. And now I'm 37, still living with graph versus host disease. And if I can train myself to do it, I would love to show you how you can train yourself too.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Jenna Sue, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Thank you so much, Dorsey. I have had such a fun time talking with you, and I hope that we get to do it again.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Absolutely. Well, guys and girls, thank you so much for coming on and for listening. Please go and check out Renna's website and her information. And please be encouraged by this by this podcast. And please uh leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And please check out my previous episodes at www.dorsehow.com. And until next time, God bless. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

That's our app for today's episode of the Dorsey Ross Show. Thank you so much to our guests for sharing such a powerful story of faith, perseverance, and God's amazing grace. If this episode encouraged you, encourage someone else. Share it with a friend, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find more episodes and ways to connect at www.dorseyrockshow.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, check out the links on the show notes or on Dorsey's social media. Remember, no trial is too big for God's love, and your story can point others to him. Until next time, keep trusting, keep sharing, and keep shining for Jesus. God bless you.