Transcript

Emanuela: Take My Yoke
Season 1: Episode 10

Carol: 0:11

Welcome to the God Is Good podcast, where we share stories of everyday people who have reignited their faith in Jesus and experienced remarkable life transformations. My name is Carol O'Brien, and I'm your host for this podcast. Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light. Matthew 11 verses 28 through 30. These words are a powerful invitation from Jesus to everyone who is weary to come to him and find rest in his arms. There are words that speak directly to Emanuela's heart. Emanuela is the newest storyteller to join our movement, and her journey began at a point where she was striving for personal and professional success. It was a place she knew well, achieving had always brought her satisfaction, if not fulfillment. God is always working in our lives to help us grow closer to Him. Sometimes He gives us great big, powerful moments that stop us in our tracks. Other times, He gently reminds us that He wants to be in our lives and lets us feel His presence. Either way, the realized transformation is a remarkable turning point in our lives. For Emanuela, it was a series of events and multiple encounters with God that helped her to slow down and reflect on her life's direction and the dreams she was chasing. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she was inspired to ask herself, if everything I'm striving for all got taken away, would I still be okay? This realization led her to fully surrender to God and begin a journey of transformation. Today Emanela is a speaking coach and story consultant who leverages her life experiences as a professionally trained theater actress and playwright to help her clients. She studied theater at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and received her Bachelor's of fine Arts degree in musical theater. Emanuela infuses her client sessions with lessons from her academic background, theater experience, and spiritual journey to help her clients align their narratives with their God-given missions, grow their businesses, and make meaningful contributions to the world. She also beautifully balances her role as a mom, homeschooling teacher, businesswoman, podcast host, and active faith community member. Without further delay, let's hear from Emanuela. Welcome to the God is Good podcast.

Emanuela: 3:13

Thank you so much for having me today, Carol. I'm very excited to be on a podcast that celebrates God and His glory and His mercy and all of our transformation stories.

Carol: 3:24

We are so glad you're here. Before we begin, can you tell us about your spiritual foundation? Did you grow up in a faith-filled home?

Emanuela: 3:32

I was raised in a Catholic home. And where I live here in Canada, our Catholic schools are actually publicly funded. So there is very little difference, if I'm being honest, with Catholic schools and public schools. Other than they do Mass on special occasions, and they might pray in the morning. I was from a family that went to church on Sunday and that was pretty much it. My mom was very faithful, but I wouldn't say there was like a deep, solid foundation for me. I did grow up knowing about God, thinking I knew about Jesus, and knowing what it was all about. It wasn't until about college that I fell away.

Carol: 4:09

I wanna come back to that, but before we do, I mentioned in the introduction that you lived a life of striving and relying only on yourself. Can you tell us more about this? What made you feel so driven?

Emanuela: 4:22

Yeah, I love this question. In the CliftonStrengths finder, Achiever is my number one strength. So I come by it honestly. I think God did give me this driven and very goal oriented personality. I'm the person who loves checking off the list, the things I do, it just gives me that dopamine kick, that satisfaction. That can be taken, of course, and used for good, but because I didn't have God as my focus, it was all about me. It was like my pride, my vanity, look at what I can do. I was trying to succeed in the acting world, in the theater world, and then as an entrepreneur too. I used to always say, I don't want to be just a mom. Anyone can do that. Anyone can have babies. I wanted to make my mark on the world, so that I could be remembered. It was all for me. I think that's a piece of where the struggle came from. Is this the lie maybe that the enemy planted in my head? That being a mother wasn't enough or wasn't glorified enough. I love the stage, I love the attention, I love the spotlight, and I just always had this desire to do something big with my life. Again, when you're not rooted in faith, you don't realize how the saints did something big with their lives too, and it was for God. It wasn't for their own glory. So, that's really where I think a lot of the desire came from. And it was self reliant. It was like, I have to do everything myself. You know, it's for, again, for that vain glory.

Carol: 5:46

I love that you mention the Saints as we're all called to be saints, and many of them are really good role models for us because they too struggled with the temptations of this world. They overcame those temptations though to surrender their lives to God. So let's talk about your surrender to God. I know it included a number of encounters and experiences that allowed you to realize you had to let go and let God take the reins of your life.

Emanuela: 6:12

Yeah, I think God showed me that in little ways, but I guess it took a while to get there. Now I thank God for his patience so much.

Carol: 6:22

Me too. You told us earlier that you fell away from your faith in college and that brought you to an encounter with yoga. Can you tell us about this?

Emanuela: 6:32

Throughout my whole, I'd say 20s and early 30s, I would say,"Oh, I'm spiritual, but not religious." Because in my 20s, somebody told me about this hot yoga class. And I thought I want to sweat. And I was a dancer my whole life. And so I thought this is going to be great. And it was like, I had never sweat like I sweat there. And I just continued doing it. I became obsessed with it. And then I went and took my teacher training. I did it with the seniors that I worked with at the retirement homes. I did restorative yoga. Like I did not know until I went to the yoga teacher training retreat in Brazil, that there was anything spiritual about yoga. I thought this was an exercise. And, you know, sometimes we'd chant and say om and namaste, and I didn't really know, like, where it came from. I feel like yoga is the gateway to New Age practices. Because I started getting invited to like, moon circles, and oh, you gotta use these crystals, if you, if you wanna like, have peace, you gotta get this kind of crystal. One year for Christmas, I remember I got all my family different crystal jewelry, well this is for peace, and this is for strength, and this is for that. Not realizing that we have all of these beautiful tools within our own faith that I could be giving people, but again, was not a believer. I was just spiritual, not religious. And if you ask me then if I believe in Jesus, I would say, oh, I believe in God, and like, I think Jesus was a good teacher, but I, I don't think, I didn't really like claim him as my savior. But as I started to read the Bible, and then I felt the Lord tell me, like, go to Mass, go back to church, go to confession. I started to receive the sacraments. I started to realize, like, if it's not of God, then what is it? And then I started to see how all these yoga studios I went to would have images of these deities, these Hindu gods. And even just saying Namaste at the end felt not right. I'd rather say, peace be with you, or God bless you. When I started to come back to my faith, I felt like I had to let everything go, because I didn't know anymore what was okay and what was not, even in my theater space. Now with my values changing, I also didn't know where I fit in there, so I kind of was like, I have to stop teaching yoga, I have to stop doing theater.

Carol: 8:47

I think that's a really common realization with yoga. You go from gaining benefits from the exercise and then you realize there's a whole spiritual component to it that's not related to Christianity. Now, you mentioned you started reading the Bible again and going to Mass. What prompted you to do this?

Emanuela: 9:05

So my transformation I would say happened in 2020 and on and it was all kind of pandemic related because suddenly everything shut down as we know. And I wasn't going to church, but suddenly I wanted to go to church because there was no church to go to. I felt like, what do you mean you can't go? Like now because I can't, I want to. And one night I was laying in bed, I had just finished reading a personal development book, and that's pretty much all I read. And I went to bed one night, and I thought to myself, what's the next book I'm gonna read? And I swear I heard the voice of God say, the book." And this light bulb went off like, oh yeah, maybe I should read the Bible. So through COVID and God speaking to me through the Bible and going to Mass and then letting that previous life go, that's really when I started to see the beauty of our faith and the truth, really, ultimately, the truth. And now I'm kind of starting to see how can I bring that into the things I love, rather because we are supposed to be salt and light. But for me anyways, I felt like I had to shed it all and then focus on God and then see how can I reintegrate the new me back into the world. I know it was a very difficult time for so many and I was fortunate that I didn't have a loved one in the hospital but for me it was a time to recenter, and with everything else not available to us, what else did we have to do but spend time with the Lord? Like, I kind of feel like, I wish I had my transformation before COVID so I could have used that time even more wisely to pray. I suddenly had this hunger and thirst for the Eucharist that I had taken for granted that I hadn't even been receiving regularly, other than Christmas and Easter. And now I could not wait to get it. And, I think that the Lord was using me during that time for sure to be like, you know, all of this could be taken away. I started thinking about the world my kids were going to grow up in and because things got kind of dark, especially up here in Canada. Like people were forced to quit their jobs and forced to take their kids out of school. And people's bank accounts were frozen, like things were going crazy and I had a lot of fear. And then I was like, this is not God's world in many ways, right? Like, we know who rules this plain and we have to keep our eyes fixed on Heaven and on Jesus.

Carol: 11:30

Amen. So you had one powerful realization about a practice that was leading you away from God, and then one experience through Covid where God was subtly leading you back to him. Let's turn to the pregnancy and motherhood parts of your journey. I know this overlaps your journey a little bit because you had your first two children before your transformation, and then one more recently. Let's start with your first two pregnancies. What was happening in your life at these times?

Emanuela: 12:00

Yeah, with my first, I never really got a diagnosis and I don't know that it was depression. When you hear of that, you think like the worst. But with my first, and this ties into the God reversion story as well, because with my first, I did not have the faith that I have now, I was 10 years ago, and I had postpartum, I would say baby blues, because my whole life changed overnight, you know, with your first. Even though I was 32, I was one of the first in my secular group of friends who was having children and I did not want to give up my life. I was like, I still want to travel. I still want to party. I still want to like drink. I still want to do all the things I did before and just have this baby around. But that was not the case. And I struggled to breastfeed. And I had a C section. Also, I will say my brother in law, my, my husband's only brother passed away the same year that we had our first baby. So his brother died in January. We had our first child in April and he was the first grandchild for his parents. Then three years later when I had my second child. Again, C section. Again, not a lot of milk, having to pump, lots of breastfeeding issues, and now his mother passes away six months later. So both times that I had children, there was other factors, so it's hard to really know was this Postpartum depression? There was a lot of things compounding the circumstances, right? So with the second one I felt that was harder because I was much closer to his mom and she was such a big help with our first child. And you hear about how postpartum is supposed to look and everyone's in love with their baby. And I never felt that immediate love that they talked about. It was like work. It was all work, you know. Because I was living such a selfish life.

Carol: 13:44

So with your third baby, this was in the midst of your transformation. God was subtly working in your life, helping you to come back to your faith and lighting a fire within you. But God doesn't promise us easy journeys, even when we're walking with him. What happened with your third pregnancy?

Emanuela: 14:03

When I had my third child, just two years ago, the pregnancy was fine, the birth didn't go so great. I just don't go into labor on my own. I was planning a home birth an out of system home birth. And I had had two previous C sections, so I was waiting for my baby to arrive on his own. And I had this moment in adoration when I was pregnant, 42 weeks pregnant, and Jesus said, Lean on my mother." I was like, what? What do you mean? Why do I have to do that? And then I realized like Mary was a mother. She was pregnant. She understands this whole waiting for your baby. And then even in postpartum, she came to visit me and stayed with me to remind me that I'm not alone and that, you know, God is with me.

Carol: 14:47

First, oh my goodness. 42 weeks? When I got to be like 38 weeks, I was like, I'm done. I am so done. Second, I love that you had Mary as a role model. What a beautiful peace that must have given you. So how many weeks did you go?

Emanuela: 15:04

I was like 45 and a half weeks pregnant, and it was not coming. So finally I birthed the nine, almost 10 pound baby. We were all healthy. There was no complications. It was just more of a timeline thing. But then after the birth, I did have a postpartum hemorrhage. My hemoglobin dropped to 62 and they wanted to give me a blood transfusion, but I didn't really want one. There was like issues around that and that's not how I wanted it to go.

Carol: 15:30

And then you had another encounter with Jesus. Where were you when this occurred?

Emanuela: 15:37

Yeah. Many times I felt Jesus just in the room with me. I would be rocking the baby in the rocker and I could see Him sitting on the ottoman looking at me like, you still don't trust me? And I had nothing else but to surrender because I was doing all the things. I was pumping and weighing him, and a lot of it was breastfeeding related and weight related and all of that, but a lot of other factors too, and I felt like I was trying to do all the things, homeschool my kids, still look good, you know, there's a lot of pressure to like, put yourself together and Jesus would just say, you have to surrender it to me." Like, this is why I'm walking you through this. And even the birth process that didn't go the way I wanted, I felt like it was just a total surrender. Like, it was a C section birth too, and so I physically couldn't really do a lot. And when you're in those situations where you're just kind of surviving, and then you have to surrender it to God.

Carol: 16:32

So what I call a transformation from lukewarm to on fire for Jesus, you affectionately call a God reversion story versus a conversion story. So were there any aha moments during your story, or do you feel like it was a whole big, long process that happened for your transformation?

Emanuela: 16:51

No, you know what, Carol? I think there was many of those moments, and this is because I teach how to tell stories, so I know all about what you're getting at, like what was that catalyst, that light bulb. The first moment was when he said, read the book. That was the first moment. Then it was going back to my first confession, just the tears, like. Then it was going back to mass regularly as a family. Then it was seeing Jesus in the room with me, saying, don't you trust me yet? So there were several moments.

Carol: 17:22

So how did your reversion lead you into becoming what you are now a Catholic speaking coach?

Emanuela: 17:29

So I had an Instagram account, and I was Emanuela's speaking coach, and I still had a lot of people in my community in that world that were secular which is totally fine. But in the coaching world, there's a lot of secular practices and New Age practices still, like a lot of manifesting and things that now again just don't align with my faith. So I was having this internal battle of how do I do business in the secular world as a coach, when now I'm on fire for my faith. I didn't know any Catholic coaches, I didn't know any Christian coaches, I didn't know that world existed. Lo and behold, my Instagram account gets hacked in, I think it was like 2022. I couldn't get in it anymore. So that was kind of permission to start over. And I felt this freedom, like I can come out as you know, a Catholic speaking coach. Now I'm online and I'm trying to figure out what am I, how am I going to use my skills and talents in the virtual world, and that's when a lot of entrepreneurs were suddenly having to show up on camera, on Zoom. They were coming to me, and they were like, can you help me with my voice and my technique and my presence? And that's when the Lord showed me, this is how you can use your skills. What led to becoming a speaking coach, too, is showing people how important it is to tell our stories because it helps us heal, but it also helps other people who might be in those places. I can serve anybody because we're really doing body work, connecting to our breath, and voice work. We all have a body, we all have a breath. If you have a body, and a breath, and a voice, I can work with you. The difference though is that I can just be me, and I'm gonna talk about God.

Carol: 19:08

Speaking of who you serve, who are your ideal clients?

Emanuela: 19:13

My ideal clients are typically women of faith who are running businesses or are leaders in some capacity. And as a speaking coach, my job is really just to teach them how to captivate their audience, whether that's online, on stages, in the boardroom, in the classroom, or wherever they use their voices. I use my background in professional theater and stage acting training, as well as I bring in a lot of movement, body work, breath work, and also, of course, voice work and story work. My mission is to raise the voices of Christ led entrepreneurs and really take back the mic and speak boldly and unapologetically. And through learning how to use those skills, they can spread their God given mission with the world.

Carol: 20:01

Fantastic. And how can someone reach you if they want to work with you?

Emanuela: 20:05

Well, first you can listen to my podcast, the Speaking and Storytelling Podcast for Christ-led entrepreneurs and leaders. Next you can join me in Facebook inside the Facebook group with the same name, Speaking and Storytelling Mastery Facebook group. I actually just finished a boot camp that was free, but I do have several programs that if you want to connect with me there or on Instagram, then I would love to. I'm Emanuela. Hall at Instagram. I'd love to connect there.

Carol: 20:32

That's so great. I hope a lot of people connect with you. Now your favorite scripture is Matthew 11 verses 28 through 30: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light. Why is this your favorite scripture?

Emanuela: 21:00

It brings me so much peace when I hear it. When he says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. We can choose to see everything through this hard lens. And for me, that was motherhood and postpartum and business. It's like, it's all hard. And when I read that scripture, I remember, I can not just take his yoke, but I can, like, leave all that to him too. And this peace washes over me. And I remember the burden that he carried. This is nothing compared to that. So it always just brings me a lot of peace and serenity.

Carol: 21:33

Oh, I so agree. Following Jesus' example means really making a commitment to a life of faith, service, and obedience to God. And by doing so we'll find that peace and fulfillment for our souls. I love your story. Thank you so much, Emanuela. It was so wonderful having you on the God Is Good podcast.

Emanuela: 21:54

You're so welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

Carol: 21:57

Of course. And to our listeners, thank you for spending your time with us. It would mean the world to me if you would like or subscribe the podcast wherever you listen to it. And if you would like to tell your story, please get in touch with me. I would love to share your story with our community. And in the meantime, friends, remember, God is good!