Wake Up, Fight Back, Live Boldly with Jess Connolly

Jess Connolly: 00:00:00

Willow Weston

Willow Weston: 00:00:13

Hey, friend. I am so glad you hopped on today. I, of course, get to interview people every week on this podcast, and I just love the interview I get to hand you.

It's with Jess Connolly. She's a speaker at our spring conference in May, and we are so excited to have her. But today's conversation made me all the more excited.

This is a woman who has written 13 books on a variety of different topics, from Breaking Free from Body Shame to books on feelings of inadequacy, and insecurity that are holding us back. And her latest book is called Tired of Being Tired.

And I don't know, this conversation probably just came to me in a time when I needed it most, but I have been in this season of grief and book deadlines and launching Clyde in other cities and all of these things, and some of them are really hard and some of them are really great, but I am tired.

And it was so awesome to sit down with Jess, who's done a ton of research, a ton of work, but she approaches it all from such a real, authentic place in her own life of really having these wake up moments in her life that sort of altered and changed her trajectory and her mindset and the lies she was believing and the way she wasn't fighting for the life that she desired. So I don't know where you're at today, friend, but if you're anywhere like where I'm at, I promise this conversation will bless you. So check it out.

Jess, it's so good to be with you today. You, I'm assuming, are popping in from South Carolina, or is that where you're at today?

Jess Connolly: 00:02:07

I am, yes. It's so good to be with you as well.

Willow Weston: 00:02:11

Oh, I love it. Well, we're super excited.

As I just told you off air, we're really excited to have you out to a Collide conference and to come and preach the gospel and spend time with women and just can't wait to be with you in person. But today is fun, too.

Jess Connolly: 00:02:28

Same. I can't wait to be with you guys. I love the Pacific Northwest, love the women out there. I'm so excited to join y'all.

Willow Weston: 00:02:37

Awesome.

Well, you, you know, it's easy to look at your life, stalk you online, see the, you know, jillions of books you've read and the ministry you're doing and preaching and leadership and ministering to other women who want to be used by God and kind of just assume like you've just always been in this place and. And you've always just Been killing it for Jesus.

And you talk about this sort of wake up moment that you had years ago, and I'm wondering if we can just start there because I think a lot of times women look at other women where they're at rather than where they were and what God did in their lives. So I'd love to just go back to Jess's wake up moment, man.

Jess Connolly: 00:03:24

Well, first of all, I'll just tell you this. I'm not, I'm not totally sure I'm killing it for Jesus right now.

Willow Weston: 00:03:28

So.

Jess Connolly: 00:03:29

So that just helps anybody take a deep breath.

You know, most of the days I feel like life is, is kind of, it's kind of dragging me, but Jesus is there and so I'm really grateful for his faithfulness and his steadfastness. And I would say I've had, I've had really a series of wake up moments for me in my life.

And, and I was just sharing with you that I used to live in the Pacific Northwest. And for me in that season, that was actually probably my most asleep, my most defeated and heavy season of my life. My early, early to mid-20s.

And I had met Jesus when I was 15. And the day after I got saved, I thought, you know, I want to, I want to live for God.

I, I remember sitting on my bed and reading my Bible as a 15 year old and thinking, I want to be, I want to be doing this. I want to be studying this Bible and I want to be teaching this Bible, you know, for the rest of my life.

I can't believe this has always just been here. I want to, I want to help other people know about this.

And I had in my late teens, just really an interesting opportunity to go ahead and jump into ministry. I was on staff at my first church when I was 18 and found myself in a lot of church ministry.

And then my early 20s to late 20s felt kind of more like a heavy, defeated, broken season. And I was, we were living in the Pacific Northwest and my husband was in ministry.

And I remember just being kind of under this shroud of a lot of different lies, that, that other people had written over my life, that the enemy had written over my life, that I had written over my life, that I, I wasn't godly enough to be in ministry or to run on mission, that I wasn't smart enough, that I was too much, that I was too little, just all these things. And that was a really heavy defeated season for me. And shortly after, we moved from the Seattle area.

I'll never forget my Daughter was going through a medical crisis, and it was terrifying. She was diagnosed with a pretty severe seizure disorder.

And the first day she was in the hospital, in the icu, my mom had driven in from out of town, and she'd driven in from out of town to get my other kiddos and help take care of them. But she had come to the hospital, hospital first.

And she walked up to me in the hospital room and she said, hey, you know, what medicines have they put her on already? And I was like, you know, I don't know. I don't know what's happening here. And my mom was like, okay, well, you know, when.

When do they think she's going to stop seizing? I was like, I don't know. You know, I'm not sure what's going on.

And my mom, who's so kind and so loving and so compassionate and so tender, um, came over to me and she said, jess, you are going to have to wake up. She was like, you've got to wake up. You've got to fight. And I was.

She was talking to me in the midst of, you know, kind of trauma and tragedy and really calling me awake as a mom. But I will never forget that in that moment, something flipped in my body.

And I, I think what I would say now, what I realized happened is it wasn't that I realized that, like, God needed me to wake up, or God needed me to fight, or God needed me to fix things, or God needed me to pray certain things, or God needed me to run on mission, but that he was offering me this opportunity to live fully awake and to not, you know, slumber through the pain and the beauty of life, but really to live fully awake on mission with him. And so, interestingly enough, when people ask me how I got started, this is a long story. I'm about to wrap it up, I promise.

But when people ask me how I.

When people ask me how I got started in all of this and in small business and publishing, in coaching other women, it actually all started in that moment. Because while we were in the hospital for that visit, I borrowed my husband's laptop and I opened it to PowerPoint. I didn't have.

There was no Canva back then. I didn't have, like, Illustrator or anything like that. But I. There was a certain verse that I started praying for my daughter. Psalm 46. 5.

The Lord is in her midst. She will not be moved. He will help her when morning comes. And so I, I, I started praying that verse over her. Psalm 46. 5.

And I pulled up a PowerPoint on my husband's laptop and made a little design of that verse. And later, when we got home from the hospital, I went and had it printed off and put it on our wall.

And a friend came over a couple weeks later, you know, to visit us and check on my daughter. And she was like, hey, you should sell those. Like, you should sell those on. On the Internet. And I was like, no, nobody would want these.

And she was like, you should just try it. And at the time, I had a mommy blog that, you know, a couple hundred people read at the time.

And I put those little prints online that I made on PowerPoint that I got credit at Kinko's. And by the end of that year, that small business had. Had grown past my husband's very meager salary at the time.

And, you know, a year later, that doubled. And two years later, that doubled.

And all of a sudden, the small business was supporting church plants in Pakistan and Amsterdam and in the US and we had employees. And in the midst of that, I started a conference. And some publishers came to the conference and said, hey, have you ever thought about writing books?

And then other women were like, how'd this happen? What's your story? And then I realized, oh, I really love coaching. I really love helping other women do this.

But all of it stemmed from this one little moment in the hospital where my mom came over and said, you're gonna have to wake up. You're gonna have to fight. And if I'm on, if I'm really honest with you, I don't. I don't know about you.

I don't know about the gals listening, but most days, I really don't want to fight. Most days, I.

It would seemingly be easier to just kind of get through, to just kind of numb my emotions, numb my deep desires, numb my deep convictions, watch reality TV and get through the day. But I'm grateful for every day that I listen to the Lord when he says, like, it's time to get up. You're going to have to fight.

You know, let's go back to that.

Willow Weston: 00:09:54

Moment for a minute, because I think about your mom.

And most people, when you walk into a scenario where someone's struggling like you clearly would have been when your daughter's in the hospital, maybe you walk tenderly. You. You might see someone's needs to fight or they're asleep, but you might not say something because you risk offending.

You risk sounding too harsh or blunt or, you know, all the things. What do you think it took in that moment? For your mom to be like, wake up, Jess.

Jess Connolly: 00:10:30

Yeah. You know, I think that probably that's. And that's such a good point.

And, you know, you have to have, like, authority, and you have to have authority that really comes from loving someone for a really long time. She had loved me, obviously, my whole life at that point.

I was probably 28, and so she had loved me and tenderly cared for me so long that she had the authority to say something intense to me. But you know what? I honestly think it was.

I think it's that she had just watched me sleepwalk through life over the years past and that she had seen me kind of hang up my calling and hang up my tenacity and hang up my passions and put it all on the shelf and say, like, that all feels too hard. You know, that all feels like there might be some fear attached to it. Or that all feels like maybe, what if people don't like me? Or.

And so I think probably she had just spent years watching me not live into who she knew God had made me to be. That. That probably. And all of a sudden, now she was like, now this is going to affect you. You know, now. Now's the time.

And what I love about that story, you know, is that my mom wasn't telling me, like, girl, get on a stage. She wasn't saying, like, go write a book. She was just saying, like, this is your life. Are you going to be awake for it?

You know, are you going to bring to the table what God has given you to bring to the table? And I'm so glad she did.

Willow Weston: 00:11:55

Yeah, absolutely. When you think about women listening who are maybe in that state of sort of. You call it sleepwalking. How. How.

What are some indicators that they're not fully awake that could help them? Almost like a quiz or a test, like, oh, check, check.

Jess Connolly: 00:12:14

Oh, I love that question. You know, it's interesting. We all are really familiar with the signs of physical fatigue, right? Like I'm yawning or I have headaches, or I'm.

I just feel actually tired. My body feels sluggish. But I do think it's harder for us to notice some spiritual fatigue, emotional fatigue, or even just, right.

Like kind of sleepwalking in our souls.

So some things I would say to look for, which I love that you asked this question because interestingly, I would say some of the signs to look for are actually thinks that culturally we praise in women, and I think they might not necessarily be as positive we think they are.

So, for example, I would say a Woman who has a hard time accessing her emotions may want to pay attention to what's going on in her soul, what's going on with her in the Lord. And I bring this one up because I would say this is one that we really praise.

Like we might say that a woman who can make it through a funeral without crying, crying that she's very strong, you know, or if you can make it through a tense conversation with your husband or as one of your kids or even a boss without having any emotion in your voice, you might be, oh, she's stoic, she's really tough. You know, she's really hearty.

And in fact, actually that might be a sign that you're so cut off from processing your emotions with the Lord that, that you actually aren't that awake anymore. I would say a lack of capacity to dream or access God given, kingdom sized desire.

You know, a lot of what I find myself doing with, as I, as I'm coaching women is just helping them understand what they want and not being as fearful about their, their desires. If by grace, through faith, they walk with God and saying like, listen, Holy Spirit is in you.

So if, if there's a desire that's about the good of others and his glory, you could probably trust it. He's a good father. He doesn't just give us a lot of crazy desires just to shut them down.

So I would say accessing desire or being unable to access desire is another one to look for. And then the biggest one is interesting because I think we think this is cultural, but I believe it's actually deeply spiritual.

And that is if a woman doesn't feel present in her own life, if she gets to the end of the day and she's like, man, I barely even remember those conversations.

Or I got through, you know, a big event, maybe a family wedding or a vacation, and I see the pictures and it looks like it was a great time, but I didn't really feel present in it. I didn't feel awake in it. I would say that's a great sign that there's maybe some opportunity there for her soul to wake up in a new way.

Willow Weston: 00:14:58

It's so interesting. And I'm over here taking notes, Jess, and already have multiple people. I, I'm like, oh, I gotta send this podcast to. It's so good.

You list just four examples. Not being able to access your own emotions, lack of capacity to dream, being unable to access desire, not present in your own life.

As I'm listening to you say those things, I'm Thinking of ways that Christian culture and maybe the church has almost encouraged these things.

Like I'm literally thinking of many of us have been told when we give our life to Christ, we pick up our cross, we run hard, we get on mission and so our own personal dreams or desires or you know, even our own feelings don't matter.

It's almost like, so can you talk to us a little bit about how maybe scripture has been used in unhealthy or toxic ways to make us feel as almost these things are things that we aren't supposed to access?

Jess Connolly: 00:16:07

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm so glad you bring this up.

And I, I think truly this, this idea that we need to deny ourselves, follow Jesus, take up our cross and be crucified with Him. All true. I just am like, yes, cosine retweet. Now that being said, I think sometimes we also just forget he's also a good dad.

And so the callings and the giftings and the desires that he gives us, I believe are going to call us to crucify our flesh and maybe put down our dreams that are about our glory or about our fame or about our comfort.

But when I come across especially a woman who maybe has a God sized dream or a vision or a desire that is truly about the good of others and his glory, I will often just kind of counter ask this if she'll say like, you know, I've always wanted to, let's say I always wanted to lead a Bible study, but I just, I mean that's probably just me. I'm probably just making it about me.

Or if I'll meet a woman on the flip side who says, and maybe she finds herself in a leadership role or she finds herself communicating in some way or leading in some capacity and she'll say like, oh, I mean I, I'm doing this now, but I've never wanted to do. This is never what I wanted to do. God, God made me do it.

I will often to both of those women say like, man, what you're talking about, it makes him sound like such a bad dad. So either we have some false functional beliefs about desire and what desires it is that God is asking us to put to death.

Or I think sometimes maybe we feel like, if I'm being honest, I feel like we think it sounds more godly to, to deny what we actually do desire to do in the name of Jesus. We think that makes us sound godly.

But I would just say like most of these desires that, but again, if by grace, through faith, you're rooted in Jesus. You walk with God, you've been sanctified, set apart, you've been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer you that lived, it's Christ that lives within you. And so the desires, the thoughts, the actions you can trust.

The ones that feel kingdom minded, that feel like they're about him, that feel like they're about his fame, that feel like they're about his family, I would just say it takes some rerouting to begin to trust those things. But all that being said, let me answer your question in one sentence. I.

I think that somewhere along the way we, we were all taught, maybe overtly and definitely subtly, that if we have a desire or a dream or a vision, it must be selfish.

And I think very often those of us who have been renewed and set apart and redeemed in Christ, what we can actually access is God given desire and God given dreams and God given vision.

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Willow Weston: 00:19:55

Yeah, it's interesting because I'm even thinking about women I know who maybe chased dreams at one point in their life and had no consideration of what God's dreams were for their life. And here they are and they're living, you know, they're CEO of some big company or whatever it is.

And now the question becomes God, how do I take this opportunity and this dream that came true and actually use it for your glory? Right. Like, how do I actually use it to help other people?

And so sometimes there's that shift too where someone's not dreaming new again, but they actually, you know, accomplished something, but it wasn't with God. And now they're having to say, how do I actually invite God in, into this? Because this is a blessing and I've never actually given it to him.

Jess Connolly: 00:20:49

So good. Yeah. Which is also such an important process and so helpful to say, like, oh look, oops, I built this thing. Can you talk to me about this?

Willow Weston: 00:21:02

How did you get your fight back? Your mom said this to you in the hospital and this was a serious moment in your life.

And maybe with the adrenaline and the seriousness of the circumstance, you Felt a fight for your daughter, but how did you get your general fight back, leaving that place in that circumstance?

Jess Connolly: 00:21:23

You know, what I think helped me most is realizing I wasn't just fighting for me, but learning that I had a passion and desire to fight for other women.

And so that's what I was sharing at the time, that I was a mommy blogger, and I mostly wrote about hair or taking my kids to the zoo or occasionally write a little bit on my blog about the Bible or what I was learning. But for the most part, I just, you know, I was just kind of piddling around, having fun, just going on and writing every day.

And what I realized when I started writing about my daughter's story, about what the Lord was doing in my heart, I started writing a little bit about what I ultimately realized when my mom came to me and said, you're gonna have to fight. You're gonna have to wake up. Later on, I realized I'd probably been living with some undiagnosed postpartum depression for a while.

And so when I started to learn to take care of my mental health, to do that with the Lord, I think, and I started to write about all of this on my blog, I realized, oh, there are just. There are just many a multitude of other women walking around feeling this way.

And so I would say that is still what keeps me personally fighting to stay awake is not just, you know, my. My soul is worthy of not sleepwalking. My soul is worthy of checking in on my emotions in my mind and.

And my spirit and walking with the Lord and staying attuned to him. But also I have this desire, this passion in me to help other women do the same.

And so I think being motivated by seeing their transformation, being motivated. Motivated by hearing their pain points and hearing what. What is making them sleepwalk in life.

And then ultimately just saying, like, hey, I want to take my place to fight for other women has kept me. Kept me fighting to stay awake as well.

Willow Weston: 00:23:25

Let's talk a little bit about mental health struggles. You are pretty open about yours, and you just mentioned that you had to figure out how to take care of your mental health along with the Lord.

What does that look like for you?

Jess Connolly: 00:23:42

Oh, great question. I think the first thing it looks like is realizing that God had compassion toward me.

He wasn't coming toward me in shame in the ways where my brain felt broken, that God was not like, hey, you're a whole mess, or you're. You're. You're making something bigger than it needs to be, or just Pull it together. You should just choose joy.

That actually none of those things are things that God would have said to me. I started to realize, number one, he made my body and my brain good.

And also that he comes toward me with compassion because I live under the effects of a fallen world.

ss of just living on Earth in: 2025

My body and my brain good, if God loves me and he is coming toward me with compassion, not shame, not condemnation about how my mind feels about what I'm experiencing, then what would it look like to begin to care for my mind with God, with. With a heart of compassion as well?

And so anything I'm doing for my mental health now is not trying to make my mind good, not trying to pretend like it is good, but. But treating it like it is. Treating my mind like it was made good by God, and.

And treating my mind again, my body as well, and my soul, with compassion. Understanding that living under the effects of a fallen world is hard for every human. It's. It's heavy and. And in some ways it's. It's unbearable.

And it. It needs support and help.

Willow Weston: 00:25:33

I like that you use the phrase care with God. We talk a lot around here at Collide. Jesus collides with people all the time, and he leaves them more whole than broken.

But he often invites people to participate in their own healing. And I think sometimes we think as Christians, like, oh, dear God, just wave the magic wand, abracadabra.

And so often you see Jesus show up on people's scenes and he actually is like, I'm gonna actually ask you to reach your hand out towards restoration. I'm actually gonna ask you, lady, who spirit has bent you over for way too long to walk forward up to this place, and I'm going to heal you.

Like, you see that all the time.

And what's interesting is a lot of women have experiences, childhood trauma, family of origin stuff where they weren't invited to care for their mental health. They weren't invited to pause and go, oh, how. How am I feeling right now? Or, why is my stomach hurting? Or it was.

It's always like, we take care of everyone else. But to, like, care with God for ourselves, that's almost selfish. That's. That's like a lot of us don't know how to do that.

So for women listening, who care for everyone else, but Themselves. What's your advice for them?

Jess Connolly: 00:27:03

Such a great question.

Well, you know, I think that one thing that God has taught me and he is continually teaching me and showing me is that I really cannot do any of my roles. Well, if I'm not a daughter first, I can't be a good mother, I can't be a good leader, I can't be a good sister, I can't be a good friend.

I can actually do a pretty good job faking all of those things or even maybe showing up and striving and trying hard and all of those things.

But I will eventually burn out or I will eventually feel bitter, or I will eventually maybe realize that I'm, I'm working for my approval and not from my approval if I don't start first by letting God just bother me, by letting God just take care of me as a daughter.

And it's interesting, I think when we, when we, when we begin to let God kind of heal this idea that he, he is a good father and that he does want to treat us like daughters. And then we start to think, okay, if I was a mother, for those who are mothers, like, how would I want my.

What, how would I want to support my kids if they were feeling overwhelmed, if it was their mental health, if it was their bodies, if it was their soul, you know, how would I want to support them? Would I shame them? Would I condemn them when I tell them to get over it?

Or would I come alongside them and give them the tools, kindly, lovingly, gently for them to, yes, experience healing, maybe to take up their mat and walk and, and as any good father would, you know, we're just shadows of that.

But if there are, if there are moments that I can immediately take my kids pain away, I will, you know, if I can give them some medicine or if I can do something to alleviate some stress, I will. But if I can teach them, the ultimate goal is to teach them how to take care of themselves.

If I can guide them and show them the steps to, you know, here's how you drink a little bit of water, here's how you're going to lay down when you're exhausted.

Here's how you're going to make a list of what's overwhelming you when you're feeling overwhelmed, whether you're in sixth grade or whether you're 60.

You know, if I can teach my kids the skills to, to help them live as whole and healed and as free as they are, then I'll, I'll take the opportunity that as well so yeah, that's what I would say. Like for anyone who kind of wrestles with that self care debate, like, is it, is it self care? Is it selfish?

Like, you know, I would just say you can show up at all of the roles for a while and really care for other people. Lead, pretend like you don't have needs, pretend like you don't have desires, pretend like you don't have boundaries and limits.

But ultimately, I think for us to stay in the game, to love God and to love people, for the long haul, we're going to have to act like daughters first.

Willow Weston: 00:30:04

Such a good, good word. And in all of that, I literally wrote down working for my approval instead of working from. It's so good. I could ask you so many things.

So I'm so glad I get to spend time with you soon at our conference. But I do want to ask you about this latest book you wrote. You have written what, 13 books or something? Is that what it is?

Jess Connolly: 00:30:27

Yeah.

Willow Weston: 00:30:28

And you just came out with tired of being tired. And I, man, I, I want to know why you wrote this book. What are you seeing in us as women and what's your encouragement to us in this book?

Because just literally reading the title, I'm like, oh, I need to read this book right now. Of course you caught me in the middle of like book deadlines and all this crazy stuff, grief and all sor sorts of stuff at one time.

But I know there's people listening and they're so tired. So why'd you write this book? And yeah, what's your encouragement?

Jess Connolly: 00:31:09

You know, I always joked I'm, I'm 13 books in and I, I started joking probably around book three or four. Like one day I'm gonna write a book on rest.

And I would joke about it because I thought that to write that book would mean that I just lived a very well rested and peaceful life by that point. And so I would always joke, like one day I'm gonna write that book.

And what I didn't realize is, you know, what I should have realized is almost all of my books have been written from a place of victory and authority after some breaking, after I've usually hit my lowest of the pain point. And that was the same for this book.

I had a mental, spiritual, physical, emotional breakdown after about 20 years and in almost full time ministry in some way, shape or form. And for me it came a couple of years after the pandemic as a local church leader, as a, as an author, as a small business owner.

And I just, I just hit A wall. And I, you know, I still loved God, but I didn't really like me, and I didn't really like people.

And my body was just breaking down, just absolutely breaking down.

And honestly, why I ended up writing the book is I was headed out to go meet with my publishers and we were going to talk about what book I was going to write next. And I had kind of already warned them, like, you guys, I'm not in great shape. Like, I'm not. I'm not really in a great space to. To write a book.

And on the way out to meet them, I. I wrote down this sentence. I wrote down, every woman I know is tired.

And if Jesus says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me, learn from me. I was like, I believe him about everything, and I do not believe him about this.

I am having a very hard time understanding what this means, because every woman I know is tired. And there. There's got to be some gap between our formal belief and our functional belief.

And so that led me honestly on a period of exploration where I just tried to figure out what that passage meant. I tried to figure out what the source of fatigue was for me.

I tried to figure out some tangible, realistic, mostly free ways that women could rest, because I also saw rest kind of only build and marketed as this. This act of leisure that was maybe set aside for people who had the money and the time to experience it.

And so I said, I just thought, if Jesus has said this to me, but he said it to single moms in Kansas and college students and empty nesters and men and women and children alike. We've got to figure out what this means for us. And so tired of being tired was my exploration into what that might look like.

Willow Weston: 00:34:04

So needed. So needed. What are you hearing from women as they're reading this? Are they discovering just how absolutely tired they are?

Like, are they falling at the 26 mile, 26.2 mile line? Are they being refreshed? Are they learning new ways to rest? What are you hearing?

Jess Connolly: 00:34:27

Some of the best things I've heard, some of the most encouraging pieces of fruit that I've heard is number one, I hear from a lot of women that were trying to physically rest and trying to meet their fatigue with physical rest, when what they needed was spiritual or mental or emotional rest.

I'll say just a lot of the women I end up ministering to are in their late 20s, to their, you know, early 50s, and I would say almost every single One of us in our late 20s to early 50s is maybe, maybe even older, is dealing with some level of mental fatigue that is, that is almost insurmountable at this point.

And so I've been so encouraged to find that there are a few just simple tricks, tools that are really kingdom minded that, that have helped them make some shifts.

Not that they don't get tired anymore because this life is exhausting, but maybe they learn to rest before they get tired or they learn to actually just rest their mind in the ways that are gonna, that are gonna help them experience recreation.

I've heard a lot of encouraging things, really, truly, I think a lot of what that the book does and has done for women and has done for women as I've been able to travel and teach, is they've, they've been able to rewrite some lies about rest from a kingdom perspective, like maybe that they need to earn their rest. And instead we see in Psalm 127, God gives rest to those he loves.

Or we believe that we should work, work, work, work, work, and then rest from our work.

But actually in Genesis 2, and God creates the world, he says there was evening and then there was morning the first day, there was evening and then there was morning the first day, meaning that we actually rest and then we work from rest. So we should prior prioritize even maybe how we go to sleep, more importantly than how we wake up in the morning.

So I've seen women just kind of reroute some of those lies and misunderstandings in their head. And even, even as simple as seeing the fruit of women stop.

I've seen communities that women stop kind of humble, bragging about how tired and overextended they are, and start, and start to realize like that is actually really, that is really dangerous when we like gently kind of like pridefully drop like how little sleep we got or how many days we've gone without a day off.

And instead, you know, I'll tell women, like, we don't actually want to brag about not having a Sabbath because you can't obey God by disobeying God and taking a Sabbath is what he commands us to do.

So if we want to be women who obey God, who follow God, who, you know, live surrendered to his plan, we will actually obey him even in this, in the way that we rest instead of doing this thing that we kind of tend to do in our, in our female Christian communities where we say like, oh, you know, I only got four hours sleep last night. Oh, I only got three hours Sleep last night. Oh, I haven't taken a day off in this many, you know, days.

And instead realizing, like, hey, if our sister is saying she's tired, let's say, oh, my gosh, that's not okay. What can we do to help? Can I watch your baby so you can take a nap?

Willow Weston: 00:37:29

What?

Jess Connolly: 00:37:29

Like, how do we need to reorganize, you know, your life so that you can maybe receive some of God's good rest for you?

So those are some of the little bits of fruit that I've seen as women have their minds changed about rest and then maybe begin to rest in the ways that they're most needed in their lives.

Willow Weston: 00:37:49

I love it so much. I love the idea of this idea you mentioned of recreation, and I think we all need it.

So I know there's going to be women who want to spend time with you at our conference. We'll tell them how they can do that, but there's going to be women who just want to check you out and get your book or books.

So how can they do that? Jess?

Jess Connolly: 00:38:11

Oh, I would be so honored to connect with women. I'm Jess A. Connolly on Instagram @jessconnolly.

And then jessconnolly.com is my website, and my podcast is called the Jess Connolly Podcast.

Willow Weston: 00:38:30

You have a lot of letters, like, two S's, two L's.

Jess Connolly: 00:38:35

It's true.

Willow Weston: 00:38:38

Yes. The double letter lady. Well, I'm so.

Jess Connolly: 00:38:41

That's what I tell people all the time. Two N's, two O's, two L's.

Willow Weston: 00:38:45

I love it. I have two L's, but I don't have two of anything else. Oh, I guess I have two W's, but they're not together. Anyways, so good to hang out with you.

Can't wait to see you in May and appreciate your time today.

Jess Connolly: 00:38:58

Oh, thank you for having me. Can't wait to see you guys in May.

Willow Weston: 00:39:03

We'll see you soon. Hey, friend. I hope you enjoyed that convo with Jess. If you want other podcasts just like this, make sure to subscribe to this podcast.

And also, it's such a simple thing, but it would mean so much to me if you'd review this podcast because it makes it more visible to other people to bless and minister to them. And if you have a friend who needs to hear what Jess had to say. I know I do. Just share it. Just send it on right now.

Such an easy thing to do, to bless someone's day. And if you loved her and you want to check out our conference coming up where she will be speaking.

Make sure you go to our website at wecolide.net and we will catch you next week.

Keep colliding. Go to the one who promises that he will restore you when you're tired he will refresh you, remake you, recreate you he will meet you right where you're at but he won't leave you there he'll give you all you need so that you can live your very best life so keep colliding friend we'll catch you next week.