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I want to tell you something Jenna Schutt said to me that I haven’t been able to shake.
You can cry. You can be scared. And you can still trust God.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And somehow it undid me.
Because here’s what I think we get wrong about faith — we think it means staying positive. Not being afraid. Convincing ourselves everything’s fine. But Jenna’s life didn’t give her that option.
Meet Jenna Schutt
Jenna Schutt is a former cardiac nurse, a homeschooling mom, a speaker, and a devotional writer. She’s also a stem cell transplant survivor — and that part of her story is where our conversation really begins. She was homeschooling two toddlers when she got the diagnosis: a rare, incurable bone marrow disease. Years of chemo. Hospital stays. A transplant, with her own brother as the donor. The homeschool plans she and her husband had dreamed up — gone. Replaced with something no one plans for.
And here’s the thing — she didn’t fake her way through it. She told God she was scared. She cried in front of her kids. When her son looked at her bald head and said, “You look weird,” she didn’t correct him. She said, “You’re right. I look different. But I’m still your mom.”
That’s not weakness. That’s what real faith actually looks like.
Jenna calls it training a reflex. Not a personality trait, not a mood — a reflex. Something your mind runs to automatically, the way your hand pulls back from something hot. She used to retrain nerve pathways in patients as a nurse. Now, through her ministry Faith with Jenna, she talks about retraining our minds the same way — toward truth, toward peace, toward joy — one repetition at a time, until it’s no longer a struggle. It’s just where you go.
And she gave me an image I haven’t stopped thinking about: you don’t take the whole staircase in one leap. You take the next step. One verse. One prayer. One honest moment. That’s it. That’s the whole staircase — one step, repeated, until it becomes a way of walking.
Because here’s what I want you to hear today: your hard season doesn’t get the final word. Not the diagnosis. Not the fear. Not the plans that fell apart. God does.
This is Jenna Schutt’s story — she’s currently writing her upcoming book, The Joy Reflex™, and lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons. It’s one of the most honest conversations about faith I’ve had on this show. Let’s get into it.
Want a place to start today? Jenna created a free 3-Minute Mom Reset — a simple, biblical practice you can use anywhere, even in the middle of a chaotic afternoon, to calm your mind and redirect your thoughts toward God’s truth. Grab it here → jennaschutt.com
