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Rebuilding Life After Divorce with Dana Williams
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What happens when the very community that should uplift you during life's toughest trials instead becomes a source of judgment and condemnation? Meet Dana Williams, the resilient founder of Redeemed Identity and host of the Rise and Reclaim After Divorce podcast, who joins us to share her compelling journey through divorce within the Christian community. Dana's candid conversation reveals how she overcame harsh judgment from church peers to reclaim her identity and step into her God-given destiny. Her story is a powerful testament of faith and resilience, offering hope to divorced Christians struggling to find their place and purpose.
In this eye-opening episode, we delve into the critical necessity for support and guidance for divorced Christians. Dana underscores the importance of shedding toxic behaviors like people-pleasing and bitterness and highlights the transformative power of understanding our identity in Christ. From seeking help from Christian therapists to her own healing journey, Dana shares invaluable insights and personal experiences. She recounts a pivotal moment at a writing retreat that reshaped her path, emphasizing the daily spiritual practices that helped her overcome self-doubt and external judgment. This episode is a beacon of hope and inspiration for anyone looking to reclaim their life after divorce.
Dana's Links:
- Podcast: Rise & Reclaim After Divorce Podcast
-Website
-Who Am I After Divorce (Free Ebook)
-Facebook
-Instagram
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Is there a major life transition benching you? I know you may be asking what's next? What's my purpose? What if? Because I've asked those too. Welcome to the Start your Comeback Podcast. I'm Toni Thrash, a certified life coach, and I want to share the tools and practical steps to help you create a winning game plan to move into your new adventure. Hello, welcome back. You are listening to episode 47. My special guest this week is Dana Williams.
Speaker 1:Dana is the founder of Redeemed Identity, a ministry to the divorced Christian. She's the host of the podcast Rise and Reclaim After Divorce how to Live as a Divorced Christian. On her show she addresses the significant resource gap for those facing divorce within the Christian community. Despite the abundance of books on divorce, there is little guidance on healing from both the separation and the judgment from church peers. The struggle to rebuild identity as God's divorced child is real and many yearn for guidance on their continued purpose in his kingdom.
Speaker 1:Her mission and she has chosen to accept it is to encourage divorced Christians to rise, reclaim, redeem and step out into their destiny and call. This ministry and podcast are rooted in the belief that God's plans for us continue beyond the end of a marriage. Her podcast speaks to those who have walked through fear, shame, loss and depression, feeling as though their dreams were shattered with the judge's stamp on the divorce certificate. If this resonates with you, please know that you're not alone. Together we will rise, reclaim and redeem our identities, stepping into our call in Christ. Please welcome Dana to the podcast today.
Speaker 1:Dana man, I am so glad you are here today. Me too, me too, I'm excited. Welcome to the Start your Comeback podcast. We're happy to have you. Thank you, why don't you just give everybody a quick rundown of, like, your favorite things or something we don't know about you?
Speaker 2:Gee, a little bit about me. Well, as we just talked, I love eating junk food, and so I'm learning, I'm learning how to work with moderation. I love potato chips and ice cream and coffee that somebody else makes I don't know why. I don't know what that is about me. What does that say about me? I love reading. I love writing. I'm a writer. What else do you not know about me? I live on the same property as my daughter and my son-in-law and my two beautiful grandbabies, who are almost perfect, and I almost, because one's three a three-nager and the other one is a very is a very strong-minded 11 month, almost one year old, um, who they've captured my heart. And you know people that say, oh, just wait. To your grandmother, and I used to think, no big deal, yeah, I totally get it, I totally get it. We will die for them, yeah, yeah, it was the one thing we we needed and we didn't know we needed right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally get it. I totally get it. We will die for them. Yeah, it was the one thing we we needed and we didn't know we needed right, exactly, exactly Like why did why?
Speaker 2:why didn't we start with grandchildren and then move to children? That would have been so much better. I would have been a better mother. I think I would have been a better mother had I started with grandbabies and moved to being a mother. That's, that's how I think. Yeah, what else?
Speaker 1:about me? Why don't you tell them why you started your ministry and just give us a couple minutes whatever and just talk to us about that.
Speaker 2:Well, I was gosh. I was married to a former minister and when I went through the divorce, I, like most people in ministry, you hide a lot of pieces of yourself. When you are a leader in ministry, you know, you don't always throw all your junk out for everybody to look at and especially now with social media what a nightmare, you know. So people were shocked when we went through our divorce and they didn't know because we kept everything hidden and I kept all my secrets. And then, you know, I had to navigate a lot of judgment as the best thing, judgment from from church people. Um, and that was really hard, because not only did I lose my marriage, there were a lot of people in the church who just felt like, you know, they should tell me why I was a sinner.
Speaker 2:You know, you hear all the phrases God hates divorce. You hear the, you know well, and so you feel like you're now a second class citizen. You are leprous, you know you have a disease, you are shunned. So I had all of that, all of that. And you know, which is funny, because the denomination that we served, the leader, the founder of the denomination, was divorced twice. So it just, it's it just. I find it funny that there was this double standard and so kind of this righteous indignation rose up in me and I started to dive into the word and I started to dive into research and I thought, well, wait a minute, don't put me on the sideline. You know, I was told I would never do ministry again. I was told, you know that God couldn't use me anymore, and so I finally said watch me. And here I am.
Speaker 1:I love it, but I'm going to say this because in our previous conversations we both talked about feeling like the judgment and the disqualification by others right, and so that's a big hurdle to overcome. And so, if you're okay, I just kind of like to start there and just say yes, what steps or in what ways did you take to overcome the disqualification by others? Because it was big.
Speaker 2:It was a big one and it kept me in a little prison, in a little cage inside me. And so the first thing was and we talked about this before that you and I know who you are in Christ. First and foremost, I thought I knew who I was in Christ. I mean, I spoke from the platform. You know, I taught Bible study. So you don't really know who you are until you walk through a divorce without your partner and you're like, oh, wait, a minute, who am I? And so, but not only just who are you, but who are you in Christ, and that's I didn't know till I knew. If that makes sense, I just didn't get it, because once you know who you are in Christ, it dispels the negative talk in your head. You have to remind yourself who and whose you are, daily, hourly. You know, like I said, I thought I knew who I was. I didn't. I didn't, and I still do deep dives into the word about what he says about me.
Speaker 2:Not about what my yeah, but not not what about my former spouse says about me, not what about the church in general says about me. I want to know what he says about me, because that's where the freedom started was educating myself in the word, it just, and also educating what the word says about divorce. This was a big one for me, yeah, and there is a lot of erroneous teaching out there and we have it's kind of like generational teaching about divorce in the church that it's your, it's a sin. Well, guess what? Divorce isn't a sin because God divorced Israel twice and or no, once he divorced Israel once, God can't sin. So obviously divorce isn't a sin because he divorced Israel. So it's stuff like that, stuff like that. We're like aha moments for me.
Speaker 2:There were two. There was one book in particular when I went through my divorce and I'm holding it up so nobody else can see it because we're doing a podcast, but it just got that in myself. It's called Divorce, God's Will and it's by Stephen Gola and it's the truth about divorce and remarriage in the Bible for Christians. That was one book.
Speaker 1:That in the show notes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then the other one is the book that we've talked about in the past is the Divorced Christian by Pastor Darius Good. He is a theologian, he's a true theologian. He studied with rabbis for like a year on divorce before he wrote his book. And so, you know, jesus took was. Jesus was teaching about divorce, from several different reasons, I mean and that's a whole nother podcast that we could go into but so educate yourself about what the word of God really says about divorce and how God feels about divorce. The other is, get people around you who can read your label, and what I mean by that is that we're it's like we're a bottle of wine, okay, and we're the wine, but we can't see what's written on our label because we're inside the bottle. So that's kind of who we are. We're in our soul, okay, we can't see what's written on our label. So you need people who you trust, people who love you, people who will be honest with you, who will actually sit around you, and we would have label reading sessions in this single ladies group that I was in, and you sit in the mush pot, you're in the chair in the middle and everybody goes around the room and they read your label and it's like, okay, this is what I know about you, this is what God says about you. I know you've been struggling with this, but this is how I see you and it's life-changing. It's life-changing, it was so wonderful. And so they also would speak truth, you know, I mean, they have to be allowed to speak truth. Well, you know, I see you as a people pleaser, so that needs to stop. Yeah, I have to do that. So stuff like that, so constructive guidance, constructive love.
Speaker 2:We sometimes allow our spouses and all of their stuff to affect us. So we need to know what's what we're still carrying of that of our divorce. We need to know what we're still carrying about in our divorce because it's almost like it's Velcro we're still caring about in our divorce Because it's almost like it's Velcro. All the negative stuff that we went through in our divorce is like Velcro, and so we need people to help us tear that off. You know, like, like I said, are we people pleasing? Are we not speaking truth in our love about our spouse? Are we? Are we walking in forgiveness, unforgiveness and bitterness? That's a big one. Are we still speaking bitterness over our spouse? We have to know all these things. The one thing that I tell everybody is get a therapist or a life coach.
Speaker 2:Agreed A hundred percent it is huge because they will help you sift through the lie and give you the truth especially if it's a Christian therapist. I had the lie and give you the truth, especially if it's a Christian therapist I had. I had both kinds of therapists throughout my marriage, and the Christian one was the was the one who poured God's life into me and the word of God into me, and so that was huge. And so once you really know who you are, you stop, you start to walk like the child of God you are. You don't walk like the broken vessel anymore, you walk like the child of God that you know you are. So take the time to discover the Lord and his word, and this is huge to me.
Speaker 2:Praying the word of God over yourself daily that's what my book is about. Is praying the word of God over yourself daily. Or if you have like these words of encouragement from your friends, or if you believe in the prophetic word, or if people have prayed over you and told you things that they felt the Lord was saying about you, put all of those in a book, read them regularly. I have a three-ring binder. I don't have it here with me. I was going to show that to you in a podcast where nobody can see too. Read those things over to your over yourself. Like first, timothy 1, 18 says this charge I commit to you, son Timothy Paul is talking to Timothy according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience. So we can wage warfare for our own identity, based upon what people have prophesied over us or prayed over us, or what the word says about us. We can wage warfare and I think you need to, especially when you've been walking through a divorce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to. Well, I love that answer and I appreciate that so much because it's it's so true and we do have to know our identity is in Christ and no one or no job or anything else. My next question and how long did it take you?
Speaker 2:Well, we talk like kids. I've already arrived and this is ongoing. This is so ongoing.
Speaker 1:I realize that you still had a purpose and, before you, still had qualifications that God asked you to carry out. How long did it take you? A year, years Cause, I mean, it took me a long time.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's taken me probably, probably, I want to say 10 years, or eight to 10 years, before I started getting tired of how I was feeling about myself. I mean, and I'd been through therapy through that time and my therapist as a Christian she would she said, no, god is not done with you, god is not done with you. But I didn't believe it or understand it. And so I went to a writing retreat, a very intimate writing retreat, because I was going to write fiction. And this is from one of my most phenomenal fiction writers of all, of Christian writing of all time. His name is James Rhubart, and we each had a session with him individually, and he's the one that he read my label. And he read my label and he said dana, he said I do not see you writing fiction, I see you writing non-fiction to the divorced in the church.
Speaker 2:And I just fell apart. I fell apart because to do that we meant I had to step back into the role of a leader, and I thought that was done and so done. And so, yeah, and so I cried for five days. I cried for five days, and I don't mean just like tears, I mean like ugly crying. I ugly, cried for five days and I and I said, lord, I, I'm afraid. I am afraid because I know what people in the church would say to me. I know what they did say to me they start pointing fingers at me, thinking you can think, you can write a book. Who are you to write a book? Who are you to get up and speak to people? Who are you to do this? And so I was afraid.
Speaker 2:And so the Lord and I had several what I call threshing floor experiences. The threshing floor is where, in the old Testament, they would take the wheat and they would beat it on this floor, this special made floor, and they would beat the chaff away. And so the Lord and I you know he he'd been putting his finger on me for a long time about this and giving me dreams and I'm like Nope, nope, it's too much responsibility, I can't do it. And so it's so. This is still evolving. This podcast I started my podcast in June of 2024.
Speaker 2:So this is all new. This is all new Now. I've been writing. All these years I've been writing. I started a blog, I did a prayer group for mothers that I was, I felt safe in, but I was always hiding behind a wall. I was always hiding behind a wall, and so my encouragement to them is this takes time and, quite honestly, it takes courage and, quite honestly, it takes courage. It takes courage to keep walking. The walk it does. You know, you need to literally jump and learn to build your wings on the way down and that's.
Speaker 2:it's scary, but it is how we will step out of our little cocoon. We get into a little cocoon when we've gone through a divorce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do.
Speaker 2:You know, and we eat off of the bitterness and we eat off of all the stuff that we carry into our cocoon. That's what feeds us during our cocoon. So you know, so are. So. Are you going to feed yourself with bitterness and hatred towards your spouse? Are you going to feed yourself with the word of God? Are you going to feed yourself with self-hatred? That was a big one for me, you know. So all these things you take into your little cocoon are going to feed you. So you need to feed off of the good things. You need to feed off of the good things so that, when you're, you're ready to break out of your cocoon, you're ready to step into your destiny.
Speaker 2:And um, and I'm still actively choosing to do this I have to remind myself that I'm obedient to God, not to man.
Speaker 2:And God God is the one, is the called me, not man, and I don't care what man says, because this is what God says. And you know, if the church won't allow your listeners, if they want to step into ministry, if the church won't allow your listeners, if they want to step into ministry, if the church won't allow them to do it, they need to educate themselves on divorce. They need to go to their leadership and say well, did you see sin in me? And I mean that's being vulnerable, because there's there's going through divorce that is God ordained, and then there's going through divorce that is God-ordained, and then there's going through divorce that is man-ordained. And you need to know the difference. And if you did walk this out because you were angry and you weren't released from the marriage, then you need to repent. And I mean that's a harsh word, I don't mean to be, but it's true. It's true, you know I mean. But if you went through a dysfunctional or or maybe an abusive marriage.
Speaker 1:that's a released marriage. That's a released divorce. I wonder if you might believe that you don't know where your identity went. It might have just walked right out the front door. Thanks for joining us today. We will pick up part two next week, where we will be discussing how to uncover who you are as you rediscover your identity in Christ, and I have put all of Diana's links in the show notes for you to reach out. If you are newly divorced or even a long time divorcee and are struggling with who you are after your divorce, please get her free book who Am I After Divorce? Thanks for being here. I'll see you next week. Hey, thanks for listening. I don't take it for granted that you're here. You didn't listen by mistake. If you want to reach out, you can DM me on Instagram at Tony Thrash Until next week. Remember, there's still time left on the clock. Let's get you off the bench to start your comeback. I want to give a special shout-out to Country Club for the original music. You can find them on Instagram at Country Club. Thank you.
