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00:00 - Introduction to Jessica Morris
07:45 - Growing Up in a Methodist Minister's Home
14:37 - Journey Through Addiction and Recovery
22:00 - Dying to Self and Personal Eschatology
30:56 - Returning to Organized Religion
37:47 - Finding God Confidence and Closing Thoughts
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Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Dorseros Show.
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Today we have a special guest with us.
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Her name is Jessica Morris.
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She is an author, spiritual director and huge fan of Jesus.
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Her most recent book, higher Powered, reaches deep into the soul of every reader to excavate the crap that gets in the way of a personal relationship with the higher power.
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Jessica's honesty and vulnerability invite the reader to let it all hang out in order to take the first step into freedom from the bondage of self, and just wait until you hear her talk about it.
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Thank you, jessica, for coming on the show.
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Thank you, Dorsey.
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It's great to be here with you today.
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I always like to start off with my podcast with an icebreaker question, and today's icebreaker question is what's your favorite way to spend a day off?
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Oh well, there's got to be a nap somewhere Somewhere within the day I need to be taking a nap, because I absolutely love naps.
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So that would be scheduled in to make sure I got it.
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But right now a day off is odd for me because I quit my 30-plus year career job in November so that I could start really making a go of the writing ministry that I believe I've been called to, and so there's not a lot of days off in total.
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But I will say that one of the things that I love to do with my husband is when he's home from work on the weekends.
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We just absolutely love watching comedians silly, ridiculous comedians on television football you know there'd have to be some football in there.
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We're really big on just being together, you know, like we don't have to do anything crazy.
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We used to have a Harley Davidson motorcycle we're both getting a little too old for that now but we used to love just going on rides, you know, and and just we didn't even have to be going anywhere, just going and being together, and so, yeah, I would say I would do something with my husband and or my big sister her name's Bea, and she practically raised me and so I'd probably go to the movies with her.
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So we'd need probably about 48 hours on that day off to get everything in, okay.
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What sparked your interest in your writing and you know, in what you're doing now.
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You know, dorsey, I've been doing this my whole life, without even knowing it.
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I've been using writing as a sort of a self-therapy, I guess you could say, because when I write I feel so connected.
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I feel so connected to God when I'm writing whether I'm writing poetry, journal writing or even when I was writing, you know, research papers for school or whatever I just when I'm researching and I'm putting things together like that, that is really where the juices are flowing.
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And so the cleaner I got in my recovery from addictions, the more I felt pulled to be doing more and more and more of this.
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And so my interest really is kind of selfish in a way, because I feel closer to God when I'm doing it and I love that feeling and I recognize that I really believe with every ounce of my soul that he wants me, god wants me to be doing this and he wants me to be carrying his message through my story.
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And so I'm doing that the best that I can, and I really love it.
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What's something that you wish you would have known 10 years ago.
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What's something that you wish you would have known 10 years ago?
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Ooh, 10 years ago.
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Well, let's see, ooh, wow, something.
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I you know what 10 years ago.
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I knew this in my head 10 years ago, but it hadn't traveled to my heart yet.
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I knew from my recovery programs that ego, my ego is usually going to get in the way of me being successful, of me having a strong relationship with God.
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I knew that up here, but it took a long time for it to travel down to my heart.
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So I guess what I wish that I could tell that girl is to really listen more.
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You know, because she thought she knew a lot.
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You know, that was right when I was starting seminary I think I was about my first year in seminary and she thought she had it all together, she knew what was going on.
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And really, you know, what I learned when I graduated from seminary is how much I don't know and how much I will never know.
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You know, and that has been one of the greatest lessons of my life.
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You know, because me walking around thinking I know things is not going to help anybody.
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Can you share with us some of your story and what you have been through in your life?
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Sure, you know, I grew up a lot of this actually is even on the back jacket of my book but I grew up in a Methodist minister's home.
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My dad was a Methodist minister and my mom was a schoolteacher, and we lived in a very small town.
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I grew up in the 70s, the 70s and 80s, and so it was a very different time in the world.
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You know, we didn't all have a cell phone attached to our hand, you know.
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In fact, if you wanted to talk to someone, usually definitely they had to be home, and you had to be home in order to talk to them on the phone.
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So life was very different, and in that very small town where I lived, everyone, everything we always did as kids, always got back to our parents, you know, because my dad was the minister and my mom was the teacher at the school, and in addition to that, though, so that's like your normal preacher's kid kind of growing up right.
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And then my dad, on top of all of that, was an alcoholic, and anyone who knows anything about alcoholism knows that it only gets worse over time, knows that it only gets worse over time, and so, over time, my father became increasingly angry, withdrawn, abusive.
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You know like, and when I say abusive I don't just mean physically.
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There was physical abuse, but a lot of it was emotional abuse and mental abuse, and that, to me, is actually more damaging.
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That was more damaging to me, like I'd rather you beat me up than say anything to me.
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That's going to mess with my mind because for the rest of my life those messages are there.
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And so that's that.
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I was the youngest of four in that family.
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Early on in my life my father told me that I was a mistake, that my parents hadn't planned me, and he used the word mistake, and so that's pretty much what I thought of myself my whole life.
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I figured my dad's the minister, and he said that.
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So God must believe that also because I just equated minister and God together.
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And so that's how I grew up and I hated what he did to our family with his drinking Like I would.
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Even as a young girl.
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I knew that the drinking went with the icky times.
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You know like.
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I couldn't figure out exactly why, but I knew whenever he drank beer or whenever he had a drink, things did not go well, not go well, and I promised myself I would never be like him.
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And what happened was I became exactly like him.
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You know I used food and alcohol both they were both my addictions.
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And you know I rationalized it my entire time drinking, I rationalized that I was having fun.
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You know my dad was a jerk.
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I was having fun, you know, and that's how I rationalized it growing up and, luckily for me, I got into recovery at the age of 29.
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A lot of people are not that young when they find it, but I had some really wonderful people in my life who weren't going to let me fail, you know, and they told me the truth about what they saw.
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My older sister told me she saw a lot of our father in me, which broke my heart.
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I couldn't believe she was saying that to me.
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And I look back now and I think it's one of the most loving things anybody ever said to me.
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I needed to hear it.
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And then I had a counselor who sent me to recovery.
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She said you know, you have a lot of issues from your childhood that we need to work on for sure, but none of it's going to work until you put these substances down.
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There's a lot that happened in between, but I don't want to go on a drunk-a-log, as they say, you know.
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But since then I have been finding my way back to yeah, my way back to the true God of my heart.
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You know, as a child I was very afraid of God.
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I always could identify with Jesus because I saw Jesus as a lot like me, you know.
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I know this isn't what happened, but I saw Jesus as being abused by his father, you know, and so I knew Jesus understood me.
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But at the age of 18, when I went to college, I walked away from organized religion.
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I couldn't trust anybody who was involved with organized religion because I just assumed everybody was like my father.
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You know, I put a label on it right away.
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I put a label on it right away and even though I never stopped praying, I really I just was completely separated and I will share with person who went back to party with the people who are still at college and I was outside of a party it was January, it was freezing cold, nobody was with me because it was so cold and I was smoking a cigarette and I looked up at the sky and it was just a billion stars and I was so angry.
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I was so angry and I just started telling God off.
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I mean, I really just started like out loud swearing at God.
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When do I get my turn?
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When do I get a good life?
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You know, why are you doing this to me?
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All those just selfish, self-centered things.
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And, dorsey, I hope you can understand this.
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I don't know how to explain it to people and sometimes when I tell people this, they look at me like I'm crazy.
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So try not to look at me like I'm crazy.
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And I felt this, like warmth come over me, and I knew and I'm going to look straight ahead when I say this I knew that Jesus was standing right here, next to me, like physically standing here, and that I knew all I had to do was turn my face to the left and I would see him and I would be able to hug him.
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And I felt lovely and wonderful.
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And then immediately terrified and I ran back into the party.
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And it's still horrifying to even tell this story in that sense, because I wish I would have turned and given him a big hug, because I really want to.
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I really want to give him a hug right now.
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But I had a friend tell me several years ago, when I shared the story with him, that he said, Jessica, he knew you were going to run back into the party, but he came anyway because he loves you and he wanted you to know he was there and that he heard you.
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You know, and I get it now.
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You know, and that really was.
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I didn't know it at the time, but that was the catapult for me getting to this place where this most recent book came from, and my journey through seminary.
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I mean it, all it.
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He's been working with me on this ever since then and I can see it all.
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Of course, I can see it all in hindsight, you know, but my, my gratitude in it is that he knew.
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In that moment, I believe that I could not see him.
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I could not look at him, I had way too much shame, and so he sent me messages through all the people that guided me in recovery.
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And that's how I found my way back.
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Was that night, that moment, was that the turning point in your recovery, or was it something else that was a turning point for you?
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was a turning point for you.
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Well, that was actually.
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It was a turning point in that the next six years it was about six or seven years till I got in recovery after that.
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So I continued on the road with my addictions and it was bad, like those you know in the Bible where Jesus says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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That's what those six years felt like.
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Weeping and gnashing of teeth, that's what those six years felt like.
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I mean the loneliness, the isolation.
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I mean it was suicide, was suicidal.
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It was horrible.
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And the turning point for me happened over about a 10 month period of time, where I mentioned that my older sister came to me and told me the truth about what she saw and I got really angry at her.
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You know, I didn't like to hear what she was saying because it was the truth, I needed to hear it.
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But I didn't want to hear it and I thought I'll show her, I'm going to go to a counselor and I'm going to get help with all my problems and she's going to see it's got nothing to do with alcohol.
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And so that's the counselor, at the end of about a 10 month period, who sent me to recovery.
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And so that, truly, and and I was desperate enough at that point because, because the substances weren't working for me anymore, you know like I wasn't getting a high off of being drunk, I had trouble getting drunk, my tolerance was so high I couldn't get any fulfillment out of the food anymore, you know, I used to really get a rush off of it and I couldn't control my weight anymore.
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I was about 150 pounds overweight and I was 5'4", so that was not a pretty sight, you know.
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And so it just was.
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I would say the turning point would be loneliness and desperation.
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You mentioned, you know that while you weren't going to church, you still prayed to you know, to God.
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You know, and we assume it's the you know, the God of the Bible.
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Did you consider when you left organized religion?
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Did you consider yourself an atheist?
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No, no, I was a really angry.
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I was a really angry lover of Jesus.
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How's?
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that sound.
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I always knew God was there.
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I just figured he really didn't like me.
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That was kind of our relationship at that point.
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Were you angry at him or for some reason?
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Were you angry at him because of what happened to you with your parents and your dad, or were you just angry with him for some other reason?
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Yeah, I was angry that he put me in the family I was in.
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I was angry that he had a man like my father sharing his message with others and coming home.
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And I used to say to people it's a horrible thing to say, because I have forgiven my father and I have, you know, really I believe I've had a wonderful reconciliation with him.
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He's passed away, but I do feel like my father is sort of guiding me now.
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But I used to say to people you know, my dad was a wonderful minister.
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People loved him in the church.
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He was very good at public speaking, he was good at counseling with people, he was a lot of fun.
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And then he'd come home and beat the shit out of us.
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That's what I used to say to people and it was all true, right, but it was a harsh thing to say, knowing what I know now, you know about alcoholism and how I don't believe that it was ever my father's choice to be a bad father.
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You know, like he didn't grow up going.
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I'm going to beat the crap out of my family, you know like that, you know.
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But alcoholism takes, takes everything from us, you know, including love, including compassion, all of it.
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So I was mad at God for really allowing that.
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I remember one time asking my mother because wine was in the Bible.
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They talked about wine in the Bible and one of the miracles was even turning water into wine.
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And I remember saying to my mom why did God even invent wine to begin with?
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Because it was never a fun thing in our house, it was always a problem, and I really I just couldn't understand it at the time.
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So it was like, almost like when it comes to you know, I don't want to you know, this is your story, I don't want to go back too much to you know.
00:19:39.388 --> 00:19:52.738
So it was almost like a hidden gem for him where only you and the family knew about it and, you know, wasn't like a public spectacle where everybody else knew that the town minister was a drunk.
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Well, they knew he drank okay, because he did drink in public.
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But I think because we lived in a very small town, a lot of blue collar hunter kind of you know personalities, they loved that he hung out with them and drank with them, you know, because I think it made them feel better.
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He drank and he smoked and he had a good time and it didn't get to the really ugly level until he got home.
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You know he was always able to sort of control it out there in the public Right Until later, until later in his life he did eventually.
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He was eventually suspended from his position when I was around 23 years old for some of his behavior.
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So I mean, like I said, it progresses yeah.
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Explain the concept of dying to oneself from your perspective.
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Okay, well, I learned this in recovery, you know, when I first got into recovery, they talked a lot about surrender, you know, and that I have to go.
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Okay, everything I've been doing has not been working, and so that's why I'm here you tell me what to do and I'll do it.
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And so, basically, I learned what it was to surrender my food on a daily basis, to surrender to the fact that I was powerless over food and alcohol powerless over food and alcohol.
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And that was the introduction for me to when I came to.
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I went to seminary in.
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I was about 15 years, clean, I had done a lot of work on my childhood counseling and all that stuff.
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And I went to seminary and when I was sitting in Intro to New Testament we were talking about towards the end of the semester, we were talking about the book of Revelation and we were talking about the end times.
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And I remember thinking to myself you know, this entire semester we've been learning about how Jesus spoke metaphorically about pretty much everything.
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He used parables and symbol to tell stories and to share his messages with people.
00:22:05.561 --> 00:22:15.201
And I thought to myself, what if, instead of like an apocalyptic sort of end time thing, what if?
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When he said he was going to come back, he actually meant for me.
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What if he actually meant I'm going to come back for you, it's going to be personal and I'm going to come right for you.
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It's going to be personal and I'm going to come right to you?
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And I thought, when I had that thought in my class, I remembered when he came to me outside the party and I was like, oh, I think that's what it was.
00:22:39.061 --> 00:22:51.881
I think he was coming back, he was getting personal with me and I realized that in running away from him I went into like a living hell basically is what happened.
00:22:51.881 --> 00:23:03.692
And so that kind of got in my mind and with everything that I had seen in the world of recovery, you know, people's lives, mine included, changed completely.
00:23:03.692 --> 00:23:05.525
It's an absolute turnaround.
00:23:05.525 --> 00:23:06.825
If you do the work like, if you an absolute turnaround.
00:23:06.825 --> 00:23:11.821
If you do the work like, if you get down and dirty and you do the work in recovery, your entire life changes.
00:23:11.821 --> 00:23:16.115
You're very little what you used to be okay.
00:23:16.115 --> 00:23:20.768
So the girl who came to recovery is not the girl who's sitting here talking to you, right?
00:23:21.449 --> 00:23:28.090
And so I asked a professor a couple years later when I started to think about what my thesis was going to be.
00:23:28.090 --> 00:23:39.957
I asked a professor about it and he said it sounds like what you're talking about is eschatology, and eschatology is one of the words in the title of my book that everybody stumbles over.
00:23:39.957 --> 00:23:46.746
It's a hard word to say, in fact, when I told my sister I was studying it, she said is that English, you know?
00:23:46.746 --> 00:23:48.269
And so I mean, I get it.
00:23:48.269 --> 00:23:50.494
It's a hard word, but really what it?
00:23:50.494 --> 00:23:52.438
It's the study of the end times.
00:23:52.438 --> 00:24:07.385
And what he said to me was you know, before you write about this idea that you have, about it being personal, you should probably do a directed study on eschatology and learn all the different forms of it that theologians talk about.
00:24:07.385 --> 00:24:09.470
And so that's how I started it.
00:24:09.791 --> 00:24:20.116
And basically what I learned in all that research and then using my own personal experience, was that this dying to myself.
00:24:20.116 --> 00:24:29.239
You know how Jesus says to Nicodemus in John, chapter 3, he says to him you must be born again of the Spirit.
00:24:29.239 --> 00:24:36.966
And for me this isn't a once and done thing, because I'm human, I'm going to continue to make mistakes.
00:24:36.966 --> 00:24:38.990
Take my word for it.
00:24:38.990 --> 00:24:42.899
I am going to continue to make mistakes, say stupid stuff.
00:24:42.899 --> 00:24:58.067
You know all kinds of things, and so I have to continue to dying to that part of myself that separates me from my relationship with God, my relationship with Jesus, my relationship with the Holy Spirit.
00:24:58.067 --> 00:25:03.959
Those things must be continually put, you know, in the grave.
00:25:03.959 --> 00:25:22.690
Enough, jessica, with the ego, enough with the self-righteous judgment, Enough with whatever it is that's going on inside of my head that's keeping me from truly knowing what God has in store for me here, from truly knowing that I am worth whatever it is that he has in store for me.
00:25:23.070 --> 00:25:33.396
Yeah, and we all, and I think all myself including, and I think all my listeners, you know, would probably realize and agree with you that we all make mistakes.
00:25:33.396 --> 00:25:35.350
You know, we all need to.
00:25:35.350 --> 00:25:39.793
You know, repent daily and you know, as you said, die to yourself.
00:25:39.793 --> 00:25:42.305
You know, daily, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:43.368 --> 00:25:44.392
And it's not for me.
00:25:44.392 --> 00:25:53.032
I think one of the things, Dorsey, as you can probably imagine, that I've really struggled with for a long time is that self-righteous judgment.
00:25:53.032 --> 00:25:57.115
You know, like I would just sit in judgment of religious people.
00:25:57.115 --> 00:26:08.228
You know, because I just made this assumption that they were all like my father, they were all hypocrites, they were all liars, you know, and that's just.
00:26:08.228 --> 00:26:09.430
It's not okay.
00:26:09.430 --> 00:26:36.219
And so when I, when I go there in my head today because I hate to say it, but I still do go there sometimes, you know, not just about religious people, but anybody, I mean, gosh, you cut me off on the highway and I could go there Right, and, and I have to remember, and I could go there right, and I have to remember, it's not my job to judge you, it's God's job to take care of that and in the meantime I lean on him for the compassion.
00:26:36.219 --> 00:26:40.634
I need to have communication with people that I would rather judge right?
00:26:40.654 --> 00:26:47.808
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure my listeners would love to know.
00:26:47.808 --> 00:26:49.651
You know we talked about you.
00:26:49.651 --> 00:27:01.258
You know you walked away from organized reliving and you know for several years, but now you're back and you're in seminary and you're studying eschatology.
00:27:01.258 --> 00:27:04.413
How did that you know all work out?
00:27:04.413 --> 00:27:05.436
How did that happen?
00:27:06.565 --> 00:27:10.315
Well, you know, I couldn't say no to it anymore.
00:27:10.315 --> 00:27:21.355
And by that I mean God started poking at me very early in my recovery with learning about Jesus.
00:27:21.355 --> 00:27:31.248
So I started like I'd go on Amazon and I would just put books about Jesus or the life of Jesus or spirituality or whatever, and I just couldn't get enough.
00:27:31.248 --> 00:27:34.096
I just read, read, read all the time about everything.
00:27:34.096 --> 00:27:43.527
And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who's one of the great theologians of all times, wrote a book called the Cost of Discipleship.
00:27:43.527 --> 00:27:54.068
And I read that book and I saw myself all over it and I thought I have to say yes to this, like I can't say no to this anymore.
00:27:54.068 --> 00:27:56.735
And part of the problem was my own.
00:27:56.735 --> 00:27:58.418
You know, I was married.
00:27:58.418 --> 00:27:59.667
At that point.
00:27:59.667 --> 00:28:04.236
My husband had his ideas about what retirement was going to look like.
00:28:04.236 --> 00:28:12.633
I didn't want to throw in a whole bunch of student debt, you know, and make you know him have to sacrifice anything.
00:28:12.633 --> 00:28:23.769
You know, I still was kind of codependent in my crazy brain in that way and it took me a while to finally get the courage to go to my husband and say, look, I got to do this.
00:28:23.769 --> 00:28:26.785
I can't, I can't say no to this anymore.
00:28:26.785 --> 00:28:28.110
And so that's I mean.
00:28:28.210 --> 00:28:31.729
I showed up at seminary, I still wasn't a member of a church.
00:28:31.729 --> 00:28:33.172
I just went because I want.
00:28:33.172 --> 00:28:36.888
I didn't go to become a minister, I just went because I wanted to learn it.
00:28:36.888 --> 00:28:55.350
And that drove my husband crazy, you know, because he's like there's no job on the other side of this, like no, I actually just want to learn it, you know, and while I was there, I, I was introduced to spiritual direction and I fell in love with it.
00:28:55.370 --> 00:29:11.099
I, I just absolutely, and so I got a certificate in spiritual direction while I was there and, um, you know, that doesn't pay the bills either, though, you know, I mean, that's sort of a side a side hustle, as they would say, you know, and so I do that part-time while I'm writing now.
00:29:11.099 --> 00:29:16.697
I've been doing that part-time ever since I graduated in 2020.
00:29:16.697 --> 00:29:22.267
And now we, my husband and I, are members of a church.
00:29:22.267 --> 00:29:32.121
We did find a church in our area that we both really love and we just feel at home there, and so there we are.
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