Choosing Surrender with Jennifer Axcell #156

[Music] are you ready to jump into a life of surrender maybe not right thanks so much for listening to the parable podcast I am so glad you are here I'm your host Danielle saap chank joining me today is rest Champion Jenifer EXL she shares about how an adventure filled jump led her to a place of surrender so often we live closed fist lives uh in a world that wants us and encourages us to try to to control and keep God in boxes of our understanding keep our life in places that feel safe to us and so much of surrender is about living in an open handed way of life here's my conversation with Jennifer [Music] Exel I don't know about you but if you've ever walked into a room and you've met somebody for the first time maybe there's like something about them that really engages you and Jennifer that was how I felt about you the first time I saw you there was something about you and also you smelled great so that that's a win okay I walked into this Retreat space or I don't remember you came in and I was just like there was such joy and like love and excitement about you and I'm like I have to know more about Jennifer and so Jennifer thank you so much for being here on the parable podcast oh thank you so much for the opport opportunity and God is so good in connecting us and working through his children to do big things I'm so excited to know you thanks well we we had the fortunate chance of meeting at a retreat we were able to have a little bit of time to connect and hear about your story um you you did some yoga for us and so I was able to understand like what your heart is and so you are a champion of rest and I'd love for you to kind of EXP and dive into how that started for you like so many people it came out of necessity it came out of my own story I've been an entrepreneur for over 15 years and have faced entrepreneurial burnout multiple times and I like to say the lockdown in 2020 was the icing on the burnout cake that I had already baked for myself leading up to that and just Body Spirit I I got to the end of myself and the Lord let me get there and in his loving kindness and Grace for me used that as a major lesson in my life and I was there more than once and recovering from burnout um I mean my hair was falling out I wasn't able to sleep more than if I was lucky about an hour and a half at a time and just I was falling apart and every sense of the word and there were a lot of things that I tried on that recovery journey and understanding rest and how God designed us for rest rest in dependence on him rest in celebration of who he is uh it was a long journey of discovering what rest actually was I've heard many people say ah you know I I sat on the couch and I watch Netflix all weekend and why am I still so on Monday I did nothing and it's especially in America in our hustle culture we just have a very unhealthy relationship with r and Believers are no different and I think especially for entrepreneurs especially for female entrepreneurs in that hustle culture there's so much impostor syndrome and all of these trauma narratives and and chronic glass ceilings we're trying to shatter and all these narratives that lead us to push ourselves to the brink and I said God has used my experiences and the recovery out of this pit that I was in to change me and and really put on my heart to help others uh to pay forward out of my own experience to learn in tangible and practical ways not just what is rest but how do we actually do that so I like to say my work is really nervous system self-regulation at the intersection of Christian Soul Care and somatic healing so really understanding what is rest and what does that look like in our bodies what does that look like with our minds our hearts our souls from a holistic approach what does that look like and how do we encounter God through all of that so champion in of rest not perfector of Rest by any means I am still learning in my own journey and still finding many opportunities in my life to prove do I know what I'm talking about and I'm a big believer we have to walk the walk to talk to the talk and life continues to give me opportunities to prove how much I value rest and a life and heart posture of dependence on God and not idolization of myself idolization of self-reliance and and living under my own strength and my own abilities which is definitely this entrepreneur's uh favorite sin if you will is to lean on myself and so living a life resting because I am depending on God is so much the art of uh where God has taken me that resonates so much with me Jennifer just the idea of like wanting to do things and just getting out there and accomplishing and and even like the idea of imposter syndrome you know there is this pulse inside of each one of us specifically also Americans you're right of just like we have to get this done and there's no rest for the weary so I appreciate you being honest like it's a journey and you're continuing to build and learn I would be curious like what boundaries since you've learned about this what boundaries have you put in place for yourself to be like ding ding ding hey just a heads up like you need to be rested yeah ooh that's such a good question understanding that trauma chronic oppression so chronic stress is a major factor in us disassociating from our bodies and our bodies are basically and I I love cars I used to race cars when I was younger I grew up in the car business so I love a good car reference uh car metaphor our bodies are like the dashboard of our car they are constantly sending us messages but so often we are disconnected from those messages so for me I've had to learn what are those messages my body is sending me because most often those are going to speak loudest long before my heart and my mind are aware that I'm in the danger zon so learning what those check engine light signals were for me the first one's definitely sleep if I'm not getting a good seven 8 hours solidly where I'm falling asleep and I'm staying asleep I'm like okay all right there's stress there's underlying stuff I'm not aware of in my conscious mind that I need to take a hard look at finding those messages in my body helps me to get ahead of the problem and when I don't listen to those messages is when the noises from my body literally and figuratively start getting louder and louder until I listen and so much of that chronic stress is disease disease in the body so listening to that made a big difference and so when I'm looking at boundaries especially around my resources my time my energy my money how am I spending those in support of living out of my purpose the things that really matter to me so things like budgeting accordingly and it means there's some places I don't have money to go out and go to dinner and do all of these things but I'm able to afford because I prioritized a meal kit of healthy salads and food that is nourishing my body because like so many others food is an emotional band-aid and my body doesn't crave salad it wants the deep fried sugary Band-Aids for the emotions and so when I'm feeling that come up I'm like I'm trying to address something and my body is telling me that stress and so investing in my health by those nourishing meals is a big part of that and understanding my time how I literally on my schedule I book time with God because my time is finite and I live and die by my schedule so if it's not on my schedule it's not happening so I had to learn okay if you really value rest and spending time with the lord it's got to go on my calendar too and so don't get me wrong things get moved around and it's not a perfect practice but that's how I'm prioritizing what really matters to me because it's going in with all my meetings and all my other to-do list items and so and and with my energy who am I spending that energy on who am I spending that is also refilling my energetic cup so understanding the relationships that I have with others and how I'm spending that because the fomo and me when somebody's like hey do you want to come do this do you want to do that and I I always want to go yes yes I do but at what cost and if I don't learn to say no to good things I end up becoming exhausted so it's understanding what boundaries I need to have in place around my most precious of resources that are being spent you know just like a checkbook am I making deposits am I making with draws and what does balance in any way shape or form look like and I prefer the term Harmony cuz balance implies we can have equal amounts of everything and just ask a mother of kids you know is there any such thing as balance that all things are equal no maybe not so how do we in the various different seasons of our life find Harmony in those resources of when we are having our cup refilled and when we are pouring out of that same cups so lots of boundaries lots of self-discovery it's a personal Journey no no two people's Journeys look the same but understanding ourselves is definitely the first step to creating those boundaries around what we need and self-discovery is not easy that's the reason a lot of people don't want to do it we don't want to know the answers and that's so much a part of my journey and what's gotten me to this point and and ties in even to the parable that I'm going to share today started with gaining a lot of self-awareness and and weeding through the mud and the things that I didn't want to see about myself but being honest about that has changed how I navigate my life that's so good Jennifer because I I need to schedule because otherwise I have the intention but if if it's not there or if it's not put into Alexa so I can be reminded at the grocery store it's not going to get done and I think that having those boundaries recognizing where are our pitfalls that can we can easily be trapped in um is so helpful you mentioned as you were starting that you had raced cars and so I'm just curious I'm sure there's so many things but like what would somebody like just meeting you not realize like they wouldn't even know like that you've done in your life you've had a part of your life that you're like oh I wouldn't have guessed that about her I would say you know maybe it's understandable as an entrepreneur I I'm a risk taker by nature but I'm also an adrenaline junkie my family was in the car business I am multi-generational automotive industry and my father loved restoring and building kit race cars especially models from the 60s the big engine loud roaring race cars and so he didn't get any Suns and he just deced deed he was going to get his daughters interested in the things that he was interested in so we raced cars when we were younger and so much of my childhood memories and the fond things that I look back on in relationship to my father all go back to driving these really awesome cars and this love affair that I have with feeling Fully Alive that not that I am numb and turned off the rest of my life not that there haven't been some of those Seasons but but there's something about risking life and limb that just makes me feel Fully Alive and lit up from the inside and so whether it's building a business out of nothing and and taking the risk of that or scuba diving or racing cars or jumping out of airplanes I like to do things uh I like to say that bravery is not the absence of fear it's the choices we make in the face of our fear and I like to find Opportunities to be brave being brave is I think something that is like a muscle that you get to continue to learn and to shape and obviously it depends on the situation but sometimes people when they feel like they can't be brave and I'm like I wonder if you just didn't give yourself the opportunity to choose bravery to start learning and and deepening into that Jennifer before we jump into your Parable story I know that you love travel I would just be curious are you a person that like really pre-plans everything down to your restaurants reservations or you're just like hey we're just going to go and see what happens another great question I think that that's shifting for me in a couple different ways there's definitely been times where I'm just uh let's just get there and see what happens because I I don't know how I'm going to feel and and I never want to especially as somebody who greatly values rest I don't want to get there and feel like I've got all these things that I want to check off my list and if I don't get those done I'm going to be disappointed or you know just I might have a day where i'm like you know I know I wanted to do all these things but I really just need to read a book by the pool today and that's okay so there's parts of me that have definitely felt like I have under planned but I'm somebody who loves to be active to engage fully in new places so there is a part of me that loves to plan but that's even with the season that I'm in and so much tying into the parable is releasing the need to control the circumstances and the outcomes so there's a lot of what I'm learning and given opportunities to practice of just taking the next step and then when I get there see what happens and learning to be okay with not controlling all of the variables cuz there's so many variables I can't control and learning to be okay with them is definitely the season I'm going into specifically with my travels I mean there's like so much there with your adventurous spirit and your exciting traveling that you do I want to see how that plays out into your your Parable story and where were you when this Parable started as you kind of just jump into your journey here well I would say it really started with that understanding that God wired me to be somebody with an adventurous spirit I'm in anag 8 with a very strong seven wings so I'd like to preface this story with I'm not suggesting everybody jump out of a plane but this is something God wired me to have the desire to do so and that goes back to Again The Adventurous spirit and I also lived overseas growing up because of my father's work we lived across Asia and South America and move back to the United States so that my parents could have more kids so Travel and Adventure has been a part of The Narrative of my story from the very Beginnings so the story really starts way back then but jumping forward into more recent times so in July of 2023 I'm like what year is it now you know covid time I'm always off by a couple years I had a chihuahua named Lola and she was my heart and soul on four legs she was my comforter my security blanket she was nearly 20 years old when she passed away in July of last year and it was something I knew it was going to be hard there was nothing that could prepare me for just how hard it was to lose her presence in my life after nearly 20 years and I'm 42 she had seen me through nearly half of my life and seen so many iterations of me from college days to moving to San Francisco and starting a new life and starting my own business being single she was with me long before I got married with me well after that other dogs had come and gone and I could barely remember a time when she had not been a part of my memories and the day I was originally scheduled to skydive for the first time I was in the car with one of my best friends and so grateful to be family my cousin Mary my ride or die partner in crime because my husband does not love risking life and limb the same way I do so she's the one I do all these hairbrain things with so we're in the car heading down to skydive and I get the call from my husband that we need to turn around because that was the day and ooh try not to cray it came as no surprise to me when I look back at things and say the day that I was going to do something really hard like jumping out of a plane for the first time was the day the Lord had me go through the hardest thing I had gone through at that point and losing her and having to say goodbye and make that decision to humanely end that story on that day talk about surrender and giving back back to God that was incredibly hard and again was the day I was going to jump out of the plane and there was a lot of grief there's still parts of that that I all these months later that I am still processing but it spoke a lot to my heart about God's closeness and him sitting with me through the hard things and that was again one if not the hardest thing I had gone through in losing her and I've lost grandparents I'm very grateful to still have all four of my parents and all of my siblings this one being childless by choice this was incredibly hard and God was so close to me and so near to me in those places so by the time the Skydive got rescheduled a month later I had already started the process of overcoming something incredibly hard jumping out of a plane was so easy by comparison and I know that sounds so funny like I I had so much peace and I had so much excitement because the thing that I had been dreading for so many years because she had been sick for the last couple years and it was this long we knew it was coming and when it finally came was so hard so preparation to do something really hard by that point I was like oh man I got this and was so grateful for all of the somatic work that I've been doing because my nervous system was so ready for this and again I I was with my ride or die friend who encourages me all the time to be brave and to do big things and from the time we got to the airport getting all the harness on meeting my guide because your first jump you can't do solo you have to do it tan and so meeting this guy yeah exactly exactly you know he was a previous Army Ranger I don't know how many thousands of jumps he had done in his life and I'm just like okay this is the guy I'm entrusting to make sure I make it to the ground in one piece and not as a pancake and I was just so ready again having gone through something so incredibly hard already this felt easy and and I'm sitting on the plane you know you sit on these little cuz it's a skydiving plane and you're sitting on these weird little there's no seats because you're not going to be on there very long and I'm watching these people who are Solo divers this garage door opens up and they're just falling out the side one second they're there or one second they're gone and I'm just like I got this and I had so much peace inside my my body God just gave me so much peace beyond my own understanding that I knew and when I said goodbye to my husband in the morning I said my story doesn't end here God has big plans for me in my life and one of two things is going to happen today I'm either going to meet my maker and praise God that I'm going to see the face of Jesus or I'm going to have one of the most incredible experiences of my life and I get to choose how I want to react to the fear of the unknown do I want to let that stop me and so we get to the edge of the plane and and I'm strapped on to this guy and they're double-checking all the things and we've paid to have the photographer who jumps out just ahead of you so they can get all the pictures and all this and I just remember going okay this is incredibly scary and I'm going to do this and it's going to be amazing and I'm hanging out the side I'm the first one the first tandem jump that's ready to go out and I just heard the Lord saying like trust and surrender and this is so much what it was I had to trust that this guy is who he says he is he he's done all of these jobs he's qualified to keep me safe and I just need to let go of the side of the plane and surrender to this experience and be along for the ride and it was literally breathtaking it was in incredible incredible and I have the picture that sits here by my desk this huge smile on my face because it was so exhilarating the feel of the wind literally taking your breath away and it's just this okay let's go and I really wanted to Superman out the door and there he's like no you can't Superman this time but second one head first all you want we can do that and we get down to the ground and you're maybe in the air 90 seconds if you're lucky because you just fall so quickly and I heard the Lord say to me Jennifer Jennifer look what you can do when you trust and surrender now imagine what I will do through you if you will trust and surrender to me and it was he came in so clearly so loud and I just remember at the time going not only is this going to be the first of many jumps and can we go back today like I was so ready to go again but God I hear you I hear you and it's been an interesting journey of learning not only how the Lord the path he has me on to what that's looking like moving forward into this new season but truly what does it mean as a posture of my life again about you know rest and all this I I had understood that from the safety of the ground resting in him and surrendering to him and and what he's doing but this was an opportunity to face that from 30,000 fet in the air what does that look like and it's incredible how that continues to show up and that brings me back into the travels so 2020 again during lockdown when the world all of a sudden got closed off to me this desire and this passion inside me that I knew was always there but boy did that light of fire under me to just go I want to experience the world I want to experience God's creation there's so much like the coral with all of the rising temperatures in the ocean and the bleaching that's happening there are God's creative wonders that are going to disappear in my lifetime and I don't want to well I'm excited to meet Jesus when when he is ready for me there's a lot of his world that I want to experience firsthand and I can't just let this fire in me and so for the last three and a half years my husband and I have been making the Strategic career moves and really just moving in the slow and steady pace of change and so the next figurative jump that I am making we are putting everything into storage We are Becoming digital Nomads and we are going to travel the world for the next two to three years God willing it could be longer than that again I I am trusting that God is who he says he is and standing on his promises that he is making all things new and that in the face of all of these things that scare me he is with me he is with me as close as he was when I jumped out of the plane as close as he was when I was in a severe car accident 15 years ago as close as he always is and recognizing his presence in my life and depending on his provision his way of doing things his timing in all of these things and surrendering control control of my circumstances and control of the outcome of my circumstances I am learning so much about myself that in the face of making this big leap I tell you what jumping out of a plane was easier than leaving the comfort of the familiar the life that my husband and I have built for ourselves our church family that we are so involved with and my literal family who are all here in Colorado with me leaving all of that behind to experience God in new ways in other cultures in other places that will stretch my faith will stretch me outside of these boxes of my understanding especially culturally and trusting and surrendering the outcome of all of this to God and not losing sleep literally over the all the variables cuz there are so many variables to be able to live this nomadic lifestyle and be able to work and other countries you know Taxation and just making sure you've got enough wifi to do all the things and all the stuff you don't think of until you're forced to assess every aspect of how you live and condensing that into two suitcases yeah Jennifer the thing that I love about your story and and why I love stories in general is that while our stories are different there's pieces that connect in a way that helped me like oh like yeah I understand that so when when you talked about the loss of Lola everyone has something in their life where it is their comfort it is their constant it is the thing that is just there and we just we don't even like think too much about it because it's a part of our life and so when that is stripped away from us when we have to surrender some of those things over because this is the world that we live in that is a chall challeng it's really hard for us to question like what's next I'd love for you to speak into you know like there's this the fear of the unknown and just like what you were wrestling with like were you wrestling with God were you just like I want to accept this how are you feeling at that point when the loss happen and then choosing to move on first thing I'll say is I'm glad I was actually able to feel so much of my postcar accident trauma filled life had me numb to my feelings and so a big part of what God's been working in and through me in my healing process is allowing myself to feel because I'm just such a big believer is we fight not wanting to feel the really tough feelings but those emotions it comes from the same place so when we're fighting and and numbing and because we don't want to feel the hard things we're also numbing our ability to feel the exhilaration of the really great things and so feeling period has been a big part of my journey so sitting with the heart emotions sitting with the fear and recognizing what that looks like in my body again because I I I am healing the disassociation of My Mind Body Spirit you know so much like Western American Medicine we compartmentalize the different parts of ourselves and so to feel all the feelings it was feeling it in my heart which felt easy cuz my heart was broken it w it was feeling it in my mind as depression and anxiety and grief and then feeling it in my body as stuck as heaviness and just it felt like I was for months circling the drain of the loss and I could barely see everything I was looking at was through this lens of grief and one of the things I've been learning as far as a feeling is what is grief not just the grief of the loss of a loved one which is so much more relatable and tangible but the grief of change and what does it feel like in my body to be losing the comfort of the familiar and to recognize that as grief to recognize where the Depression was coming from that this was grief as well and grief has stages to it you know acceptance and there's anger and there and there's all these things and I've gone through all of those emotions as part of my grief grief is its own emotion but it encompasses all these other ones as well so when I can view all of this change and all of this fear and all of these things as grief it helps me to go okay I can handle grief because I know grief is temporary and I've been doing a lot of reading and research on The Grieving brain brain and what is the Neuroscience of grief so that I can better understand what is my brain doing as I am processing this change and so moving forward in the grief of what I'm leaving behind but actually feeling the grief feeling all of those feelings and not just trying to numb or move past or you know just oh just focus on the good things the more I focus on feeling all of the depth of the those feelings the more it actually makes space for me to feel the excitement because if I'm numbing the hard feelings it's really hard to feel the excitement of the new and so that's what the Lord's been doing with me especially during Lent this year he made it very clear to use the Lenton season as a focus on the death of what was but to not lose sight that at the other side of this is his resurrection power and new life and that's very much in the SE and where I'm moving into now is yes there's still the parts of me that I don't want to leave my home I don't want to leave my friends I don't want to leave the comfort of knowing how my day is going to look because I I've done this before but to move into the excitement of God you are doing a new thing and I want to be with you in the new because I know you're there and I know he is with me in the past he's with me in the present but I don't want to lose out on the in incredible experiences he has for me because I'm too attached to what I already have and so just like releasing off the side of the plane it's letting go and surrendering and feeling the exhilaration of the new experiences that are to come but it requires you to feel all of the grief and all of the hard stuff too so that you can feel the excitement of what he's doing and to actually be excited did for it you said once you had reached the ground you felt like God was just saying Jennifer look at the things I can allow you to do because you have chosen to surrender and you you use the word posture how do we have how do we tap in to that posture of surrender if you are just a human in general you just want to have control you have that sense of entrepreneurial Spirit where you're like well I'll just get this stuff done how do we like sit and relax into and learn how to have that surrendered posture I think it's a process for each of us and this is one of the places I know you and I met through boundless and the initiative that I'm a part of of boundless is infinum and there are literal postures of uh surrender generosity and Mission that we practice regularly both as the tangible physical postures as well as a way of life and so I really like the surrender one and understanding that so often we live closed fist lives in a world that wants us and encourages us to try to control and keep God in boxes of our understanding keep our life in places that feel safe to us and so much of surrender is about living in an open handed way of life and so for me I daily practicing with my hands in a fist and then opening them up I really love to do burning ceremonies I will pray with the Lord and I will write out like God what are the things I am struggling with and what are you telling me and I will write these things down and then I will take them outside into the fire pit and I will literally burn them and I will watch them go up in smoke and just with my heart go okay God I'm giving this back to you knowing control was an illusion anyway way I never actually had control so it's not God I'm giving this back to you it's God I'm acknowledging it was never mine in the first place and this is something you don't do once this is something I do time and time again over the same things and just give it back give it back give it back and recognizing who really is in control and then my heart posture is in response to that truth because it can still be really easy to just look at ourselves and go okay I'm giving this away I'm giving this away God I'm giving this to you and it's me me me and so the way I get my heart into that posture of surrender is remembering who God Is So then my focus is less on the things I'm giving up because I spend enough time in that worrying place trying to control those things but reshing my focus back to who God is and then from that place of the abundance of that I call it I I go outside I listen to my favorite worship songs that just speak to my heart of who God is and I go okay now that I remember who you are thank you God for that reminder giving these things back to you knowing they were always yours to begin with and I open my hand back to you to do whatever you are going to do with this and Lord I may not understand because his ways are not my ways and so often his timing is not my timing what do you mean what yeah my God I I'm giving this back to you again and I repent and I'm sorry that I'm still trying to control the outcome of this place so it's remembering who God is helps me to live in that open handed yeah heart posture and not wanting to control Jennifer thank you for this conversation for bringing us to Adventure to being brave um but also what it looks like to surrender and to know that he has us and he is such a good God and if people wanted to learn more about rest or you how can they do that you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook um my website I've got a Blog I'm going to be interspersing a lot of my travels within um my work with loto Wellness so uh online definitely on all the platforms well all of Jennifer's information will be in today's show notes Jennifer thank you so much for being a champion of rest and I'm just excited to see where God takes you and your husband and how you're going to continue to surrender into him thank you so much thank you what a joy and a bright spark to encourage us to live out our lives audaciously all of Jennifer's contact information is available in today's show notes at Danielle zap.com and here are two reflection questions from our time with Jennifer number one how can you discover and Champion rest for yourself today number two in what areas this week can you choose a posture of surrender by living open-handed thanks so much to my tremendous producer OFA husband Eric for making us sound so great I am thankful that you took the time to spend it with me remember your Parable it showcases how he is in the jump to surrender we'll see you back again next week on the parable podcast [Music]