Broken to Beautiful

How did Pastor Jason Peaks learn to overcome Suicidal Ideations that started in Middle School to Thriving and Living a Full an Abundant Life?

Hear how there is life after suicidal thoughts, there is hope, there is happiness and light at the end of the tunnel.  Pastor Jason Peaks courageously shares his journey & how he was able to heal and just on the other side of his lowest point he moved into his Destiny with his Darling wife Danielle and created a future and family.

If you are ever in those places where you feel like your life is not worth living
or you're just struggling emotionally and you're considering taking your life please call or text the National Lifeline Hotline #988 and it's 24 - 7.

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Transcript

Right before I met Danielle, I had a really intense, about a year long experience with depression. That came from a engagement and then an un-engagement. And so it is interesting that, some of those wrestles and struggles actually were part of the journey in me even meeting my wife. 

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Hi, my name is Camille Battaglia with Heavenly Hookups  I'm so excited to be here with Pastor Jason Peaks. He's my pastor at Our New Song Church in Vienna, Virginia.

He's a very special man, a very loving, kind man, a gentle soul, and he's a big man as well, but he's a sweetheart, someone that you can trust in and rely on for help. You can just tell that he genuinely cares, about everybody and wants to help everybody that he meets.  He's just a warm, kind soul.

Jason, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it and I know our listeners are gonna learn a lot from you. Thank you for coming. Yeah, thanks for having me.  Jason, was the Campus Ministries Director and Worship Coordinator at Regent University for 9 years.

He also simultaneously served as an Administrative Assistant to his parents church called Open Door Church, for Pastor Tony and Kathy Peaks, he is a passionate communicator who integrates his love for education with a prophetic edge.

Jason has a BS in religion. What is a MAR in Worship Studies from Liberty University? Master of Arts and Religion. 

And Received his  Masters of Divinity from Regent University. He loves all things creative.  I just really appreciate you being here. Jason is also a husband to the beautiful Danielle.  Yes. And Father to their four amazing kids who have really cool names. Their names are Mercy, Kallon, Juniper, and Eastley. So did you come up with these names or was it a collaborative effort between you and Danielle?

Yeah, we definitely had some collaboration depending on which child there was different people taking the lead on each kid that we had. Yeah. They're really cool names. I had to mention 'em. Yeah.

Today we're gonna talk about a very important subject. We're going to talk about suicidal thoughts and the struggles and how to get out of them. Yeah, so I've had a pretty strange story in life. My mother was never supposed to have children.

 And so a huge part of my journey is that she prayed and asked God for a son and that she had a son she was gonna give him back to the Lord. That was definitely a huge part of my journey. Because she was four and a half months pregnant before she found out she was pregnant with me.

Because she didn't think she was able to, so she had no, no understanding of how that would've come to play until that happened. Such a beautiful part of my story is feeling that dedication to the Lord from a very early age. My parents were pastors like you mentioned, Camille.

Grew up in the church was very involved in the church. But a huge part of my story was my wrestles with like depression, suicidal ideations when I was in middle school. I was pretty young. Really wasn't something that people, at least in the church community I was involved in, people weren't talking about it very much and weren't engaging it and, so some of the things I was struggling with had to do with self-worth, self-value.

And then I think later I was able to determine, a lot of it had to be connected with self hatred. And so yeah, I had a really intense experience where I almost took my life and had a vision of Jesus. And that was the kind of turning point for me. I was 14 years old and basically the kinda result of that was just really my whole life kind of being turned upside down.

And I go on to college, I decide to follow my parents' footsteps. I go into ministry. And then my senior year of college I had those ideations come back. And then later, after I graduated from undergrad and went into my first semesters in my master's I had it happen again.

There were different instances of people stepping in. And it ended up helping me get connected to a counselor. And and so yeah, a lot of my journey was the, the vision of God. Two friends unbeknownst to them, basically were a huge part of preventing the second time that I was facing those ideations in a real way.

And then that third time between an experience with God and with a Christian counselor was able to begin to reset my life. Cause there were a lot of things that needed to change and a lot of mindsets and mentalities that needed to be adjusted. So yeah, there's a lot more to each one of those individual stories.

But that is a huge part of my life and my journey. Of how God has helped me really come to grips and come to face with the intense emotions that I experience on a regular, sometimes daily basis. 

How to walk with him in and through it and how to do the right things to assist me to continue to be a functioning adult and to be able to process the things that are going on internally. So I became really passionate about  accessing our inner world and interacting with what's happening inside of us. The thoughts, the feelings, the affections, the emotions, the desires. 

And so that's been a lot of my journey as well has been about discovering tools and then also just having the Lord help me in a lot of these moments and situations where maybe I wasn't at the full point of, suicidal ideations, but I was at the point of, deep depressions and lots of up and downs. Right before actually I met Danielle, I had a really intense, about a year long experience with depression. That came from a engagement and then an un-engagement. And so it is interesting that, some of those wrestles and struggles actually were part of the journey in me even meeting my wife.

And the lord helping me reset after that engagement and then un un-engagement experience. Yeah, there's a lot to all these stories that I could share. 

Yeah. I want to go back to middle school when you started to get hit with these thoughts. There's so many kids today, you can just look at them and tell that they're not happy and  just like you to speak to parents or maybe there's some signs or something that you'd like to speak into about middle school age kids.

Yeah. I think that, for a huge part of my life and my journey  I always experienced an incredible amount of emotion through my whole life, from a very early age.

I heard the phrase, you're really sensitive a lot. And it wasn't just like sensitive in a soft and gentle way. It was sometimes a sensitive where I became a very intense person. So the full gamut of emotions. Learning a lot where I definitely experienced a lot of anger and loneliness and sadness, and I think probably the thing that I would say to people, number one, as parents, it's really imperative that we are well versed in the understanding of, like what emotions are. And I always joke with people, I'm like it doesn't take much to, to do a little research to realize, an emotion is basically motion that comes out of something. And so there is an inner movement that's happening to each one of us every day in the realms of our emotions.

And I feel like the most interesting thing about my kind of journey into emotions is that I felt like the counseling was super helpful when I went through it. It helped me engage. Some things that I had never thought about before. I did a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is take the negative thought and replace it with a good thought.

Cuz I had a lot of negative self-talk that I was dealing with but I think what helped me. The most was I was in seminary and I was doing research on these third and fourth century monks that lived in the desert, that they decided they were gonna try to find a way to be in complete union with God, and they ended up developing Basically eight things that prevent us from connection with God, and those ended up being taken by the historical church and were passed down and eventually turned into what we now know are the seven deadly sins. 

 And basically the way they approached it is that, these emotions, these desires, these affections are things that without the love of God ordering those things, they will pull you apart. 

And that's exactly what happens when any of us are dealing with those deadly sins, so to speak is that they really do disintegrate us and pull us away from wholeness and pull us away from the healing that we can experience with Jesus. And so when I think about middle schoolers, I'm like, most parents couldn't tell you, what are the primary emotions that every human being experiences, so when their kids have them, they don't know what to do with them. And really a lot of times young people we're just looking for somebody to to be compassionate to us in our emotions.

And to be able to say I might not understand everything you're experiencing, but I do know that it's real and it's valid. And I hope that we can find out what's going on. My wife and I, we often use the phrase that, This thing is normally really about that thing. We're just not ready to talk about that thing yet.

So we bring up this thing and I feel like that happens a lot with young people that they don't really always know how to talk about what's really going on, but they do talk about other things that can help us. I think parents having a heart to be compassionate, but also inquisitive and curious about their children and about the things that they're experiencing and things that they're feeling.

It could be a huge lifeline to them. My parents had no idea that I was struggling mostly because I was a highly kind of achievement oriented human. And so in the realm of my life, no one thought anything was wrong. It was only in private or away from people that I was really going through the struggle.

And they were phenomenal parents. They weren't bad parents by any stretch. I just was a kid that was going through a lot and didn't know how to talk about it. I think for parents, for kids who are experiencing  that season of life where, Most of us begin our understanding of who we were created to be around 10 years old.

And so by the time you get to middle school and you're in that 12, 13, 14 year you're either bolstered. In who you believe you are or you're completely challenged in who you believe you are. And so what happens a lot is people have really difficult slumps in those seasons because either they thought they were something or they thought that they were going to be something.

And in those years seemed to be a challenge, a direct opposition to who they believed they were to be. You either have to learn to move through it, or a lot of times it ends up being like, what, how can I escape from, the dashed heart, the dashed dream? 

And that was a lot of my experience was that I had a big vision for my life. And unbeknownst to them, like some teachers had really squashed my dreams and my heart, and then I was trying to rediscover myself. And then from that rediscovery there was a lack of acceptance of just my unique way that I've been wired. And particularly in, school context with teachers.

Even the school that I went to, It's like someone said like you were born in the wrong place. Like they just didn't really know how to process who I was and that created just a lot of tension internally. I don't belong here. I shouldn't be here. Does anybody really, want me to be myself?

All of these questions start coming up that I think all of us humans have at one point or the other. Which I think is super important to realize that every one of us is so much closer to, having mental instability, having really negative thoughts possibly self-harming thoughts.

It's not as far away as people think. And I think a lot of that is, we know in the scriptures that the enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy  and so I do believe that, part of the journey is supporting people where, how can we be the opposite of that? Where instead of  killing and stealing and destroying them.

We can look to encourage them, give to them our attention our affection and ultimately edify them and build them up. And, the experiences of my life were that there was a lot of. I would say there was like a lot of negative communication from people around me and they say it takes seven encouragements to cancel out one criticism.

If you can think about that that's a lot of encouragement that most of us need because of the difficulties that people are saying to us all the time, which was a huge part of mine. I had a lot of internal criticism as an achiever. And then to hear other people criticize on top of my own criticizing, that's what put me at the place of being overwhelmed.

That explains why you are the way you are. You go out of your way to make sure someone feels welcome. I've seen you do it at church, and if someone's new the first day, and now I, it explains why you want to make sure everybody has been seen and heard. Yeah. And that they feel welcome. Yeah. That's really important to me.

Yeah, that's incredible. Is this still something that you deal with from time to time? I look at it as a spiritual attack on your life, obviously, because you are a powerful man of God.  But is this something that kind of tries to sneak in now and again? Or do you feel like you've overcome this?

Yeah  I haven't been to the place of ideation in a very long time. I've had moments where the struggles have come back periodically. I think that I have a lot of tools like in my tool belt that have been really beneficial to me. The last time. I really went through it. One of the things that I think has been such a huge part of my journey and my life, and I think you'll probably understand it a little more being in our community but I really started realizing kind of the power of words. 

I used to quote when I began to pick my myself back up from all the difficulty and being in counseling and all these things, I'm like, how do I rebuild my life? After all of this difficulty and all these different struggles and all these different issues that I was facing and dealing with and I just went back to Genesis chapter one. It's the beginning, right? And that in the beginning, that the earth was formless and void and darkness ho hovered over the face of the earth, but the spirit of God hovered over those ancient primal waters and God spoke. And once he spoke, things begin to come into existence and I really value that a lot.

In that season I started sitting at the edge of my bed and quoting that verse darkness, hovers over my life. I'm formless and void. Would you speak a word God into me that I might be able to be something that's good. Like he says about everything that he speaks, life into in Genesis chapter one.

And I used it as like a modality to rebuild the structures like of my heart, my life, where every day I would read scripture until one word like stuck out to me. And then for six months, seven months, eight months, all of a sudden you have a lot of words  that are now leading and guiding how you live.

And that was a huge part, I think, of sustaining. Myself from not going backwards. Like I said, there've been some seasons of real difficulty, but I do go back to, some of those words that help to reconstitute the life that I'm living currently. And I'm back into just another practice of it because the emotions that I experience are still intense every day.

I haven't wanted those things to be turned down because I realize that if God gave me these feelings it means that he wants to do something in them. He wants to use them. He wants to communicate through them. Jeremiah has been like a big inspiration for me. 

He's like such a big feeling prophet in the Bible, who cries and the next moment he's ready to, have fire in his bones. And, he really does experience the full feelings of God. And it's funny because I learned in my journey that the Jewish people acknowledged Jeremiah as not just being a prophetic person who can hear God and speak the word of God, but he can also feel what God feels about things. And when you can feel what God feels about things, then you act differently. And so that's a huge part of my acceptance, into being a big feeler is to not try to keep those things away, but to bring them closer, welcome them and find out what's going on with them.

What are they trying to communicate about? Maybe what God's feeling about something, how I'm feeling about something, how somebody else is feeling about something. They're really powerful to be able to engage, welcome, embrace, befriend, and not try to cast away or throw off necessarily. But to always bring them to Jesus and to be able to say, Hey, what's going on here?

It's like a dashboard light is how I think about it. There's something going on. Let's find out what it is. Yeah, let's get curious about it. So yeah, I do still have moments where, those feelings of depression and, self-hatred can come back or, something shameful could come back.

But it's always like an invitation, I think, from the Lord to get reconnected to him and get reconnected to maybe what's really going on. So that last big episode was it like really intense because you were coming out of it did you feel more like it was stronger because you were breaking through?

So, I think that for me, what the highlighting of that, that third instance was that I was 14 the first time the second time that it became really strong. I had all the feelings, but it never came to the point where there was like a plan. 

The second time that there was a plan I was around 22 and then from 14 to 22, to not have any of those where it got to that same level of a plan and ideation, but to come to it again in one year's time. It was  when I was 22, it was like in February, March, and then it was in October of that same year.

I think it alarmed me that there wasn't gonna be, six years between these feelings, but it was within one, calendar year that it caused for me to be like, okay, there's something not good. I really need a better understanding of what's going on and I really need to seek help.

And so I did. And I was working as an administrative assistant for a pastor. Not my parents at that time, but someone else. And I walked into the pastoral office and there was a counselor that was on staff and he randomly came up to me and just was like, how are you today? And I just started crying immediately cuz you know, I was just feeling all of that.

I had not slept the night before because of the experience of being right there on the edge. And and he started meeting with me and counseling me. Like I said, he was a. He was, he had a counseling degree and was a licensed counselor. And so it was so powerful for me to go through that.

That really helped me understand a lot more of what was going on because, up until that point I was just trying to figure it out on my own. 

Yeah. You were isolated a little bit. Did you have trouble trusting God to hand it over to him and give it to him, or do you think it was just because you were dealing with that all on your own that it was harder.      

Yeah. I think I grew up in a context that says God can do anything. I watched God do lots of amazing things. I think in some ways, because no one really talked about it, I didn't really have a strong sense of, oh yeah, God's just gonna be able to fix this.

It almost felt oh, this is just something we don't talk about. Maybe. Isn't really involved in some ways in these kind of matters, or because I already had a lot of self-criticism. I must just have a lot of problems, or I must just be a really difficult one. And maybe we'll get to it eventually.

It was the mindset. And so I don't think I ever doubted that God couldn't deal with it, but I think I knew, the older that I became, I realized I knew that I needed. I needed spiritual health, but I also needed emotional health. And I needed the fusion of those things to truly be whole because I had all the answers in some ways spiritually.

I was a bible major, I was working for pastors. I was discipling like tons of people in that season. I had theology, down where I understood all these things. But I needed some new, Perspectives on what was going on internally. And I've said this to many people, I think there's the tendency sometimes to try to cast off, get rid of, throw away certain things.

To deal with them. And in my journey they've only ever come back which is very scriptural. And so I'm like if we can try to figure out, what is the part of it that's connected to God and what's the part of it that's not, and separate between those things, that's actually how we can really find freedom.

Is not throwing the baby out with the bath water. Don't throw your emotions out just because you perceive them to be negative. Let's acknowledge what that emotion is telling us, and let's find out how we've been partnering with unhealthy things to try to deal with it. Yeah. I don't know if you can unpack that a little bit more.

Yeah. Let's just let's just, when you said to separate it. Yeah, let's do that. Let. Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. So let's just use sadness. I feel like a lot of times Christians are not allowed to be sad. It's true. It's like you just, we wanna be happy all the time and Jesus is alive and you shouldn't be sad.

But the hard thing is that part of life is just sad. It's not a bad thing to accept that part of our experiences are sad cause what is sadness ultimately telling us? I think sadness so often is telling us like, we need comfort.  And so like that to me is a good thing.

So if I experience sadness, I'm looking for comfort and another human being, or God can provide that comfort for me. But let's be honest, do we always go to people for comfort or always go to God for comfort? No. No, we don't. No. So what we might go to, we might go to. A sexual relationship, we might go to food we might go to other substances to find that comfort that we just need in human relationship or in a relationship with God.

And so I think that's what I'm saying about separating it, where you're like, okay, so I need comfort. Let's find a way to find, that need met. Because my emotion is telling me that I need something, but let's also detach from whatever I think is in comfort that's really like a pseudo or artificial comfort.

And I do think that's where you, I think you can see, if you're sad all the time and then say, somebody who really likes to eat when you're sad can you see how easy it is to partner with a spirit of gluttony, for instance? And you don't mean to, you're just trying to get a need met.

You're just trying to understand that emotion. But it's because a lot of times those things are un-communicated. And so I think discerning it, some of it is learning. Okay, what is this telling me? I love to ask the question, what are you feeling and what is it telling? And then what is it telling you is then you have to express the thing that you need, and then you can also reject the artificial, substitutes for that need being met.

Which I do think, become a lot of things that become entangling, possibly sinful. I don't think the emotion of sadness is sinful. It's what do we attach to when we're experiencing sadness that I think a lot of times, keeps us from the love of God. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense.

So did you isolate yourself when you were  going through this torment? Or did you try to push and go out and be in the world and be in public? Yeah, so part of the beautiful thing that God does in transformation of hearts and lives is in the first experience of having a plan.

When I was 14, I really in that season did not like people because they were always the cause of so much pain. And so I used to say things like, my friends are the characters in the books that I read. But when I came to know the love of God in that moment, when I had this vision of Jesus walking in my room, when I had my plan in place, what ended up happening was there was like this new idea of, wow, like he loves me and so I too am invited to love others.

And so even though. I went through a couple other moments, instances, etc., of, intense suicidal ideations. What ended up happening is I always ended up seeing the need to bring people in because I knew that was a huge part of what had happened, where the Lord, when he came in into that moment with me, he immediately said, and now you can like go and love others. 

Like I said the second time that I was at that place it was two friends that were there that basically caused for me to not take that step. It was physical attention and presence. And was where one guy physically stood in a door for almost two hours talking to me.

He was like, six four. So he is like filling the doorway. So it was like a physical impediment where I could not, I felt like I couldn't move past him when I was so weak in that moment. And then meanwhile, the other friend was in, in the corner in the place of prayer. And so it felt like between those two spaces, this man praying, not necessarily knowing what's going on, and this other person giving me the gift of presence and attention those things.

Those feelings were met and touched by humanity, I think through the spirit of God. And then, I was able to not end up taking those steps. And then, like I said the last instance where it was really severe. It was that, someone came up to me and asked me how I was doing and it, that kind of opened that gate up for me to say, yeah, I wasn't good last night.

It was not a, not a good experience and I know I need help. So I do think that there was the need to reach towards people even though I knew that it was like a scary thing to do. 

Wow, that's so powerful. So is there anything else you'd like to add to that for anybody who might be dealing with any suicidal thoughts?

Yeah, so there the beautiful thing is that there are literally hotlines that you can call and text if you are ever in those places where you feel like your life is not worth living and I think that it's so beautiful. It's a really simple number. It's #988 a #9 1 1 thing and you can, and it's 24 - 7.

It's basically just a prevention network where people are there to just talk you through, help you get through. So if. If you are experiencing, suicidal ideations where you are, considering that your life is not worth it or you're just struggling emotionally and you're considering taking your life I'd say call #988.

And then, there's a lot of resources. There's churches, there's counselors, there's people who are willing to help. I think the most important thing is to really, ask yourself the question of what's really happening?  What's God really doing?

Because I do think that he's involved in this and that ultimately these things are pathways. To finding the love of God in a greater manner. And that's been a huge part of my story, is that every time I experience that self-hatred, that pain, that rejection that lack of acceptance, I was able to come to learn and know the love of God and the love of humans in a really beautiful way that helped me take the steps that I need to take to find my value, to find my worth, and to ultimately find a life worth living.

Yeah that's an easy number to remember #988. I like that. Yeah, because most people suffer in silence and they don't have to. I think they just, Yeah. Feel alone and there's nothing more heartbreaking than watching people you love go through something like this or torment.

Yeah. And unfortunately, most all of us have all seen this or dealt with or actually lost loved ones or friends. Yes. And are there any warning signs?  Yeah, I always tell people silence is a really big sign. That when people who you love and care about when they're silent, that's actually, a good indicator that they need pursuing.

Because I think that was what happened for me a lot was wanting someone to reach into that space, wanting somebody to be, like I said, inquisitive, curious, compassionate. That was really, that's really the things that changed, cause really every person who's struggling with any kind of emotional struggle they're really just looking for connection.

And so I think that if you see someone  withdrawal there's some natural things you can pay attention to. When people stop eating, they stop sleeping. Like I said, they're really silent. Those are things that are normally indicators. Sometimes it's a lashing out, could be another indicator.

It's different for every person and that's what's really a little challenging. And so I think the most important thing is, creating pathways for the people in your life who you love to talk as much as you can and to listen. Even more than you talk, and the power of listening goes so far.

And I love it because I think you see Jesus's presence in the world. He asks a lot of questions to those who are around him, and I love that he's always giving space to listen to their responses. So we can do the same. We can ask really good questions and learn how to be really good listeners. That's a huge gift to the world. 

One more thing on this ... Yeah. In the Bible, we're supposed to cast down imaginations, but you're saying not to do that in this situation? Yeah. I think that the rest of that verse is submitting it to the knowledge of Jesus.

So I'm not saying that we don't take our thoughts captive. But I think we need to know, what our thoughts are and try to discern, what they might be telling us, what they might be helping us with. And then you know, to me, it's really about learning to guard your heart for out of it flows the issues of life.

It's what a says in Proverbs 4, and I think guarding our hearts in that way is recognizing what is good and what is not. And so like I think coming back to bringing it to Jesus is really crucial. But emotions in and of themselves are not bad. There's no indication that they are bad things in the scriptures.

They're more opportunities to learn and acknowledge and to figure out what's happening. But ultimately we're always looking to submit everything to Jesus. Because he is, the ultimate say, he is the one who can help us the most. I think that passage is talking about those thoughts that overcome Jesus, that they become more preeminent than what he would say, what he would think. And that's a huge part of it, I think. 

Like I said, I think every situation is different and complicated. And unfortunately, although that's a beautiful verse, it might not always apply in every single situation. There's definitely an invitation and a call throughout scripture, to really respond to people in a different way. I'm reading the Book of Job right now. And, job's a powerful book, but, he's going through like unbelievable difficulty.

He's saying things I would rather be dead, and the people around him. They're in a lot of ways, they're like you're wrong. You're doing bad things. This is why this is happening to you. And we on the outside know that's not actually true. He's an upright good man. 

You could potentially see that, he doesn't necessarily need to get rid of some of these thoughts that he's having. He needs people who can be comforting and compassionate to him to be able to continue to walk through this journey that he's on. We're really, the Lord is saying, this is my guy.

Yeah, that's such an interesting perspective that if you're going through something difficult and you feel like you're not important, you're not someone who matters here, you're not worth living. It could just be that you are the beautiful person that the Lord desires to use, desires to love people, desires to connect with people.

And the best thing I can do is not to tell you to shut up. Or to throw that thing aside. It could be that I need to bring you comfort. And let the Lord, cause we know in the story of Job the Lord comes and kind of sifts through everything. And so I think more than anything, I'm just talking about building the practice of sifting through our hearts and our minds with the Lord.

And not necessarily being too quick to just,  suppress something, that might be there. Because we all know that, if you repress something to suppress something, it only gets stronger, don't touch that button. Don't touch that button. Don't touch that button.

Almost kills you not to touch the button, yeah. But if we can learn to feel it and then release  that's a whole different. And that's, I think that's a huge part of how my journey has been. Where I'm really looking a lot of times to ask what's going on, what's happening, and then asking, is this the Lord? Is this not him? And really leaning into discerning and knowing, who he is, what his heart is for me, what does it mean that I'm someone who's following him, and how can these things tell me when either he's doing something bringing things to the surface or when he wants me to maybe rid myself of some things.

Wow. That's incredible. Now onto a fun topic. Yeah. Tell me about how you met Danielle when that happened. You said you were coming out of a really big depression, I think you might have said. Yep. I had been engaged and then unengaged right before a little over a year and a half, probably before I met Danielle.

Coming out of that place, the Lord was just so kind to me. I had gotten to the point where I was really looking for comfort and solace, in substances and had a kind of revelatory moment at a friend's house. And when we had literally been partying the night before and felt the Lord just said, Jason, it doesn't have to be like this, and it was such a strong feeling in my heart that I really said, okay then what does it look like?

And it was a beautiful journey of saying yes to the Lord and saying yes to what was going on. And so at a birthday party of actually a really good friend of mine. Which she and I ended up planning because I was a close friend of his and she was dating him at the time. We met and it was a beautiful moment of meeting because we had heard about each other from a lot of people.

I had seen her on the college campus where I was working. She was working, I was also attending one, one time before. And she ended up like asking me just some questions about myself and I began to tell her about what God had been doing because it had been so significant. Cause it had just been like three weeks before that I was like, okay, it doesn't have to be this way, what way could it be?

And had really become to rebuild a relationship with the Lord after such, painful rejection of the little girl that had been engaged to before.  And as I was sharing, like what God was doing in my heart she started crying and I was like, oh my goodness, I don't know why she's crying. And I didn't know, like for the rest of the time what was going on.

 And then a few times after that we would bump into each other.  And I'll never forget this one day I was on my way to work and my dad was talking to me and he said, I just, I think it's time for you to start dating again. And I was like, dad, you're ridiculous. I don't ever want to do that.

I had come to the point where I was like, I'll just be like a Christian monk, I'll just live for the Lord and nothing else, and he's no, I really think you should start dating again. I ended up going to work and after, at work, I was leading worship that day.

I came off the stage and my boss came with me. He goes, yeah, I think you're supposed to get back on the horse and start dating again, and for it to be in the same day. I'm a pattern person, so I'm like, okay, there's a pattern. There's a pattern. There's a pattern here. I should pay attention.

I'm like, did you call my dad? Did you talk to him? And I ended up bumping into Danielle that day. Wow. And the funny thing about that was when I asked my dad, dad, I don't even have anybody on my radar, who would I even consider? And he said, oh, that girl, Danielle, that I met that one time. And which was really strange.

She had broken up with the guy that she was dating before. He'd actually broken her heart quite intensely. And I was like that's silly, it was funny because another one of my friends actually had a lot of feelings for her. But we bumped into each other at a computer lab and we started talking and it was casual.

It wasn't anything crazy. And then we ended up finding out that we're both invited to a birthday party the next day, so we're gonna see each other again. After, like I said, being on the same campus for years and only seeing each other one time on campus, and then I saw her one time at a birthday party.

It was just very strange to me. And we talked the whole time at the birthday party that we were invited to, and we just, had each other's numbers because we had been texting about the birthday.  I pretty intentionally was, talking to her because I was really intrigued and my heart was open, I think because of the admonitions of my mentor, boss and my dad.

And she ended up texting me, I think it was on Monday, so it was like a day later and I was kinda laughing. I was like, oh yeah, I guess we do actually like, have each other's phone numbers, from the birthday party. And she was telling me about, I guess my dad had said something to her when he met her at this birthday party about my mom being like a good preacher and she had listened to my mom's message that Sunday, and so your mom really is a good preacher.

And I was really struck by that because I've always had such admiration for my mom and for just the godly woman that she is, and the amazing preacher and teacher that she is. I was like, oh I really love that she acknowledged that. And so we just started talking and it was basically non-stop talking for a week straight.

And we were like, okay, I think we like each other. It was a funny thing to, to say, all right I guess we can start chatting. And I ended up going on a trip shortly after that. Maybe not even a month I don't think. And I got stuck in Florida because a hurricane. And I ended up being down there much longer.

And I, when I came back, she was like, I don't want you to ever leave me again. And I had felt the same way and I just knew okay, this is, this is more than just like another girlfriend. And so that was in October. And shortly after then I started to just consider like, all right, let's be serious about this.

Let's really start talking. And I ended up asking her this question that I had in my heart because I had a dream about marrying someone. And the question that was in my dream was... what is it that you think of when you think of me  and in the dream? It was very evident that the person who said yes to me, like to marry me had a, had an unlikely response.

I sat down with her and we were just so enthralled with each other, but I was like, this is like my determiner, it was like, like the first, like real serious date I think that we went on and I just said, I need to know, like, When you think of me what is it that comes to your mind?

What is it?  And in that season, I think a lot of people would've said oh, you're, I was a worship leader, so a lot of people knew me to be a worship leader. And they knew, they knew I was in ministry. I worked with my dad, my mom and my dad of that season. I was obviously like a really nerdy student.

So a lot of people knew was in seminary and  I was, I had a good reputation around campus  and she said, do you remember when I met you at the birthday party? I said yeah.  I was like, and I made you cry, and she's yeah. And she said, I never had a chance to tell you why I was crying.

She said, I was crying because she said, I felt like  when you open your heart, people experience the presence of God. And she said, and when I think of you, that's what I think. Wow. And I was just so touched by that and so moved by that because I felt like it was just not a typical answer. It wasn't, that she liked my broad shoulders, which, she does love and tells me often, it wasn't, the goofy, silly person that I am that, make her laugh all the time.

It was that she thought of me as someone who, when they open their heart, up to other people that presence of God shows up. And it was like the hook for me. I was like, I'm done. Like this is the one. And it didn't take long for us to get engaged. 

We got engaged in June and then we were married the following October. Oh, wow. That's a great story. Yeah, it was a funny story. There's lots of other funny things in it, but it was a really beautiful redemption story and one that just felt like the Lord had really ordained so much of it.

And she says that, and I say it, there were just so many moments that we are like, wow, God, you really did set this thing up. In some crazy and wonderful and beautiful ways. And so yeah, that's a little bit about how we became a couple which is crazy. We're gonna be at 12 years this year.

I've just been, I've been loving, loving being married to her. She's such a gift. Yeah, she is a gift. That's a great story and congratulations on the 12 years. So Jason, would you like to say a prayer for anybody who might be dealing what you've went through? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. God, I just thank you so much for Lord, those who might feel like they're in just a broken place, Lord, they just feel like that they're past the point of connection with you or distance from you.

Lord, I just thank you that you really do turn things around from broken to beautiful. Lord, I just thank you that you've done that in my life as a testimony that you have taken a very broken human who didn't even like people. You know that you've turned me into a people lover. Lord, I just thank you that you've taken someone who has been rejected and abandoned.

Hurt time and time again and you've made me to be somebody who can extend and love and care. And Lord, I just pray that every person would see that the pain that they've experienced, there is purpose behind it. And Lord, I thank you that you are working all things out to the good. And Lord, I pray would encourage that someone's in the difficulty that they would remember that it's not the end unless you've finished your work and have called it good. And Lord, I just pray that they would hear you speaking to them the good words of life that rebuild their hearts and their minds. And Jesus, we just ask that. For anyone who is wrestling with what's going on, Lord, I pray that they would realize that they are not alone.

That first and foremost, how precious are your thoughts towards them? If they were to count them, they're more than the sand. But Lord, that they would also be surprised at how many people around them have thought about them, who care about them, who want to acknowledge them, who see them, who want to know them, who want to become those that would listen and respond to them. Lord, I pray that there would just not be a single person who would not find people that they're looking for and that they would not find a God who is near. And we thank you for being a God who is near and that you've come to declare peace to the far and peace to the near.

And Lord, we thank you for that wholeness that you're inviting us into all the time. Lord, would you take all of our emotions and bring them back to your love in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. Yeah. You're so welcome. Yeah. And I believe this message is gonna help a lot of people and I know that it's opened up my eyes to a lot of different ways to approach people.

Yeah. And I just want to thank you for your experiences and your wealth of information. If they want to get a hold of you, is there a way that they can reach you? Yeah. They can just shoot me an email or they can find me on Instagram or on Facebook. My name's Jason Peaks, like she said.

My email is Jasonp@ournewsong.org. I think you can also find it like on our church website, which is ournewsong.org. Would love to hear from you. I'd love to encourage you on your journey and to point you in the right direction of some great resources. I'm trying to always find more resources for those who are learning about their internal worlds and what God might be wanting to do in those places.

And what's your Instagram?  It's Jason Peaks.     Just my name.  Yeah, it is. Yeah. 
Oh, thank you for joining us on Heavenly Hookups Oh, thank you, Camille.  

I'm your host Camille Battaglia with Jason Peaks, and this episode was brought to you by Princess Gabby Girl & the Sparkly Dress children's book, and it can be purchased on CamilleBattaglia.com.

Also sponsored by Grateful Heir Clothing, follow on Instagram @HeavenlyHookup_s.  And until next time, thank you so much.