130. How to Find Peace When Everything Feels Out of Control

Something happened that completely shook our world and forced me to ask a hard question: When everything feels out of control, what do I reach for first?

In this episode, I'm sharing why I've been away, what's been happening with our family, and what God has been teaching me through one of the hardest seasons we've faced.

We talk about:

• My son's baptism and the spiritual warfare that followed
 • The devastating accident involving my husband's best friend
 • Stress, anxiety, and learning to surrender control
 • God's design for biblical priorities: God first, marriage second, children third
 • What sanctification actually means (in simple language)
 • How the Holy Spirit changes us over time
 • Finding peace through Philippians 4:6-7, Isaiah 43:2, and Matthew 6:34
 • Discernment and why Scripture must be our foundation
 • Why practices like manifestation and energy healing cannot offer the lasting peace found in Jesus Christ

If you're walking through fear, uncertainty, spiritual warfare, or simply feeling overwhelmed, I pray this conversation reminds you that God is faithful—even when life feels anything but stable.

If this episode encouraged you, please like, subscribe, and share it with another woman who needs hope today.

Topics:
Christian motherhood, Christian encouragement, biblical womanhood, Christian marriage, anxiety, trusting God, spiritual warfare, sanctification, Holy Spirit, Christian living, biblical priorities, faith during hard times, Christian podcast, Bible study, surrender to God, discernment, peace in Christ.

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Transcript

Welcome Back And Life Update

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of Counterculture Mama. I'm your host, Danielle Venables, and I want to start off this episode just by apologizing for how long it's been since my last episode. I am actually not sure how many weeks I've missed at this point, at least three. And of course, I try to stay as consistent as possible for you guys just to pour into you and to, you know, help you continue to seek God and seek truth. And, you know, my hope with this podcast is really to help people apply biblical principles to their everyday lives, to motherhood, if you're in business, then to business, to to home, to your marriage. And sometimes what that ends up having to look like is taking a bit of hiatus when my family needs me a little bit more. So a little bit of a roundup of what's been going on. My son was baptized a few weeks ago, which was amazing. But with that, there's also been some spiritual warfare going on just with my family in general. There were some allegations made against my boss, and so we've been navigating that at work, and that's been quite a bit on my plate, and I've had to just make sure that I'm, you know, getting into the word and taking care of myself and you know, just really supporting and equipping myself to handle the things that that are going on there. And then about a week after, once that started to die down, then my husband's best friend was in a really bad car accident. So he ended up getting airlifted out of our town to a bigger center and was in a medically induced coma for over a week. And he is awake now, praise God. He is still very confused, but he is, you know, speaking. And my husband was able to go down this past weekend and and see him and spend time with him. And, you know, things are are finally not just waiting and seeing, but we have a really clear idea of like where he is and and hopefully some clarity on his prognosis and his recovery. So yeah, prayers, prayers for him and his family are always welcomed and appreciated. We also put together a GoFundMe for the family. So if you want to donate to that, I'll put that

Baptism, Spiritual Warfare, And Work Stress

SPEAKER_00 2:55

down in the show notes as well. It was a really devastating accident that obviously was very serious. It involved multiple families, and so I'll put the other families GoFundMe as well. They have a two-year-old boy who is in a similar state in the hospital right now. So prayers for everybody involved there. That happened about 10 days ago. This might be day 11 now, but yeah, needless to say, there has been a lot going on. And as somebody who was running a business, you know, my focus was on the business, sometimes to the peril of my home, to the peril of my marriage. You know, I was so focused when I was in New Age on, you know, success and money and, you know, proving myself by by making my business work and and going after the opportunities that I was maybe a little bit blind to the needs of my home and my family at the time. And that is something that the Lord has been working on me in um for probably the last year or so, if not longer. Um, and it's been a really good journey. But what that looks like in practice is that I have to prioritize and I have to make sure that my life is in the order that God wants it in, as opposed to the order that I think it should be in or needs to be in, or the order I want it to be in at times. That being said, through the process of sanctification and through just walking with the Lord, my desire for my priorities has also shifted and changed dramatically. Where I don't have to put as much effort into placing my desires in line with God. It's more like desire God's order, and I crave that order. And so that part has been a little bit easier, but it still looks like deprioritizing the extras and being willing to classify some of these things, such as the podcast, as extras, where before it was like that was the top of my list. Now ordering my life God's way, it God comes first, my husband comes second, my kids and family come third, and then everything else comes. So my hobbies, my work, even my involvement with the church, things like that, all come underneath those top three priorities. And so when I do get pulled away, whether it's supporting my son through spiritual warfare, whether it is supporting my husband, navigating something very intense and very difficult that neither of us has ever had to navigate before, it's like my schedule immediately gets cleared so that I can maintain my relationship with the Lord, support my husband, and support

Crisis Forces A Priority Reset

SPEAKER_00 6:10

my children in the ways that they need. And then everything else I can pick up again later, which is what I'm doing here. So I wanted to use this episode sort of as a way to talk about the ways that God has moved me, the ways that I have seen like changes and fruit in my life. I think sometimes it's easy when we're walking the path and you know, we're getting into the word and stuff. It's like you feel some days like things are just speaking to you, other days it feels maybe a little bit more difficult, or you're not getting as much out of scripture, and those seasons can be really challenging.

Sanctification And The Holy Spirit

SPEAKER_00 6:58

But what we often don't see is like that one percent shift that happens. So it was Easter of 2025 when I first gave my life back to Jesus, and it has been a process of what's called sanctification ever since. And what sanctification is, is basically the Holy Spirit moving you closer and closer to righteousness. It's like shaving away any unhelpful patterns, any sin patterns, any like struggles and strongholds. The Holy Spirit will actually go to work in your heart, and those things will start to lose their appeal. They'll start to just shift. It'll come down as conviction of like, I don't want to be like that anymore. I don't want to live like that anymore. And I want to clarify for those of you who maybe aren't Christian, that sanctification is not, oh, God said to do this or the Bible says to do this, so therefore I'm going to do it. I mean, Jesus does say, if you love me, you'll follow my commands. And so there is definitely a degree of obedience that we should strive for as Christians, but that obedience isn't like a forceful obedience of like I have to do this in order to be saved, or I, or God will reject me, or I won't go to heaven. Like it shouldn't be motivated by that fear or that, like, just straight up, by my own will and by my own strength, because the Bible says so, I'm going to do this. Like, yes, there's a degree of discipline, and there's a degree of, you know, just choosing righteousness, even when our heart is maybe telling us something different. I believe it somewhere in Jeremiah's it says the heart is deceptive above all things. So it is important that we're not relying on our inner guidance and that we are calibrating our choices and our decisions and our thought processes, calibrating those to God, to his word, to his commands. But at the same time, what happens with sanctification is that believers get the Holy Spirit. And so when you get the Holy Spirit, that is your connection to God that is inside of you, that is working on shaping your conscience, that is guiding you, that is helping you resist temptation, that is informing you and helping you discern what is right for you, what is not, what is God's will, what is not. And sanctification is basically the result of having the Holy Spirit. It is God in you guiding you to a life of righteousness. And it doesn't mean that we're never tempted to sin. We definitely are, and we will be until Jesus returns or we die. But what it does mean is that our consciences are are being calibrated and we are, you know, open and receptive to the best of our ability to what that internal compass is really telling us. But the difference between you know all the answers, look within, which is a lot of the new age ideology, versus sanctification is that you're actually calibrating it to the objective moral standard of God. And again, like reading the word and like priming your mind to really know and understand God's character is a great way to help your mind be more aware of where God would be leading you and where he's not, because we know that there is a Holy Spirit and there are unholy spirits, and they can both influence our thoughts, our ideas,

Scripture As A Guardrail Against Deception

SPEAKER_00 10:53

what feels right and wrong, our consciences, especially in a world where consciences are being shaped in a lot of ways very contrary to God's will. So the Bible is an important tool to be able to calibrate our consciences to God's actual will and to weed out some of that deception, some of the, oh, it sounds true, but it's not a hundred percent, right? Like at the end of the day, if you're mostly right, but a little bit off, you're still gonna end up in the wrong spot. Just think about like a plane flying. And if you're one degree off and you travel 5,000 miles, that one degree is gonna land you in the completely wrong spot. And so it's really important to understand and calibrate to what God actually said, right? The age-old deception isn't that Satan came in the Garden of Eden and was like, oh no, God didn't say that. He said this instead and presented us with something completely contrary to what God said. But instead, Satan was like, Did God really say that? And he plants that seed of doubt and that seed of separation and that seed of like, you know, are you sure that that's God's will? And so by getting into scripture, we give ourselves the benefit of calibrating to what God actually said, not little pieces of it, not taking Bible verses out of context and using them to affirm Christ's consciousness or agnosticism or universalism, but really taking the whole word of God and allowing Scripture to interpret scripture. And what I mean by that is when there are different words used, whether in Hebrew or Greek, you can actually look up where else in the Bible did that appear, what context was it in, how does that interpretation affect what I'm reading here? Because certain words will be used in certain contexts, and also just going back to the original meaning, Hebrew especially, but Greek as well, they have very nuanced words and verbs that when you translate it back to the original language, you actually get a lot more like color to what is actually being said. So reading the Bible in English is amazing. You can get so much out of it. And then when you start to be like, oh, I'm not sure I'm really understanding that piece, and then you'll go look up what the the Greek word was in the New Testament or what the Hebrew word was in the Old Testament, and you kind of like define that word and you kind of expand it out of like this is sort of the bigger picture of what it means, as opposed to reading it in a sentence where you know, in the English translation, you just have to pick a word that that means that word, right? Or a series of words that that translates that word. You know, it it really helps the understanding as well, which is not a tangent I was expecting to go on today, but you know, it really does add a lot of clarity, a lot of precision in the language that would be easy to overlook if you're just taking bits and pieces of scripture and applying them how you feel they should be applied, right? And that's the deception. Like even when Jesus went out into the desert and was tempted by the devil, Satan wasn't throwing at him the absolute opposite of what God said. He was tempting him with things that were truth adjacent that sounded like they could be true. And Jesus's weapon against that was actually saying, it is written and quoting scripture. And so that really is our measuring rod for how we interpret the world, how we interpret, you know, decisions and actions and things like that. That really has to be the foundation of what shapes our consciences because Satan is working really hard to get us just one degree off that path, to get us just a little bit lost in the woods. So, all of that to say I have really been being shown through this car accident, through supporting my husband, and you know, we had a conversation where it was like I'm gonna get emotional talking about it, but where it was like, we don't know how to navigate this. We've never navigated this before. And there were some things where, you know, I was wanting to seize control. I was wanting to, you know, I can't control his recovery. So instead, I'm gonna control the GoFundMe. I'm gonna control, you know, and by control,

When Control Becomes A Coping Tool

SPEAKER_00 15:51

I mean like I'm gonna use my my online marketing skills. And I think we should post an update here, even though, you know, the family maybe wasn't ready or we weren't able to get a hold of the family to run the update past them and stuff. And I was like, you know, just wanting to do everything I could to help that GoFundMe grow as much as we could to make sure that he was as supported as he could be in his recovery. But that was my coping. It was like, I have so many big emotions, you know, this guy is family to us, and I can't fathom what happened. You know, at the time he was in a coma, so it was even less certain like what the prognosis would be and stuff. And I was just like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna dive all in on the things that I feel I can control. And that was the GoFundMe. That was, you know, I collected a bunch of of documents uh for his family so that they can apply for, you know, different insurance coverage and and things like that, where they need to know like his income and stuff. Uh this this guy worked for us for for quite a few years, so I had access to a lot of those documents. But I was really just like instead of sitting in the discomfort of I don't know how to do this, I don't know how to cope with this, I don't know how to support my husband in this, I went to, okay, what can I control? And for the most part, it was great. You know, the GoFundMe has been a success. The the documents I'm sure will help with all of those applications that they have to do. You know, I was really trying to take as much off their plate as I could, which was all coming from a really good place, right? But it was still just me like grasping for any control that I could find. Any little bit of any bit of anything. It's like if I can control it, I want to throw myself into that because this whole situation feels really out of control. And I want to I want to be able to do that. And so that had kind of instead of softening into the emotions of what was going on and really just sitting and being present with my husband, it was like go, go, go. And that was my response. And I think through that I came under conviction, you know, a few days after the accident. My husband and I, like I said, we were talking and we were like, we both don't know how to do this. And when I realized that, not only was I able to give him more grace for the boundaries, the uncertainty, the everything that he was carrying and going through. But I was also able to just consciously hand it to God and be like, okay, God, like this is yours now. Like we we have done what we can, and I'm very proud of the ways that we've shown up and helped support his family and support him, and of course, we'll continue to do that as needed. But I really had to hand it to God of like, I feel out of control, but I just need to give this to you. I need to lay it at the foot of the cross. And surrendering and giving up that control gave me the freedom and the bandwidth to really pour into what does my husband need? Right? Instead of see the problem, fix the problem, try to control the problem, I let that

Surrendering To Serve My Husband Well

SPEAKER_00 19:26

go and I was able to just say, okay, what does my husband need right now? How can I serve him? How can I love him better? And by taking that focus off of trying to control the uncontrollable and putting it back onto my God-ordered priorities, right? God praying every day, still praying every day for his recovery. But you know, reordering to make sure that God was coming first and my husband was coming second. And with that, it's like, what do you need? How can I be a better wife? How can I be a better helper to you? How can I be your safe space? How can I be your soft landing space when you come home at the end of a hard day of work? Not only, you know, physically working your body hard, not only mentally working your mind hard, but also like this is a guy who would have been on this work project with him had the accident not happened. And so he is, you know, sharing the GoFundMe at work with the supervisors at the safety meeting. He is, you know, managing a crew where if he had just had his friend there, things would be going so much smoother and so much easier for him and just more enjoyable because obviously they they like each other and they like working together. But, you know, he was carrying so much during his 12-hour days at work. And I just had to soften and I just had to be like, how can I not make it about me? Not make it about my feelings, not make it about my discomfort or my uncertainty or my fear or my emotions. How can I, you know, not let my emotions take over and just hand those to God and then just be soft and be there for my husband. And I again, I my default is control. I would not have been able to soften and do that if it weren't for the Holy Spirit, if it weren't for God working in my life and working on my heart and constantly bringing me back to the truth that I can't control anything, but everything is in God's hand. And you know, there's a passage in Philippians four, verses six through seven, that says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, With thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And that is exactly the peace that I was needing. That was exactly what I was blocking in my own life because I was just trying to be the strong one and I was just trying to push through and hold everything. And, you know, like as soon

Prayer That Brings Peace Beyond Understanding

SPEAKER_00 22:28

as I let that go and I said, okay, God, this is yours. Like obviously, your hand protected him in this accident. That's why he's alive. Obviously, your hand, you know, was with the doctors as they were treating him. And, you know, they had the wisdom to put him in that coma right away and protect his brain. They had the wisdom for how to wean him off of sedation when the time was right. You know, your hand has been in his recovery as he's woken up, as he has shown improvements day to day. Like your hand is in all of this. And at the end of the day, if it wasn't your will that was taking place, then like he would have been dead. Right? Like nothing I can do will change that outcome. So I really had to like humble myself. And as soon as I did that, and I literally just handed it to God, that peace that transcends all understanding hit me. And I was able to just like, okay. This is this is my home. This is my role. This is my family. This is how I'm gonna pray. This is how I'm gonna show up for my husband. This is how I'm gonna talk to my kids about a really difficult situation. This is how I'm gonna support his girlfriend as she's going through all kinds of, you know, emotions and stuff. It's like if I hadn't given that all to God and just and just received that peace from him, I wouldn't have been able to show up the way that I've been showing up for the past week. So there is real power in prayer. And I do believe that a lot of his recovery and the good news that we've gotten is because of the power of prayer. I have got a whole army of amazing church family praying for him. Obviously, the community is praying for him, and you know, we've had some prayers going back and forth between the two families that were impacted, and that that little boy who's in the hospital as well. But you know, I do believe that that those prayers are are being answered, I believe, fully, because that situation could have been a lot, a lot worse. And at the same time, even if a prayer goes unanswered, the peace that we receive is an answered prayer. You know, just handing it to God and allowing us to walk through something really difficult that is that is an answered prayer. I'm gonna pull up a Bible verse here that just popped into my head because it's another one of God's promises where it's like we can only walk through hard things because of God's strength and through his grace. It's not because we are strong, it's not because we are tough enough to just push through. It's like when we go through things that feel impossible, that is God's hand at work. And so this is Isaiah 43, verse 2. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, the flames will not set you ablaze. And that's been another one where it's like we're walking through hard things, and the fact that we're not being taken out, the fact that we're not being swept under, the fact that I'm not just in bed with my hoodie over my head every day, just struggling and struggling and struggling. The fact that I have the strength to face the day, the the fact that I have the strength to, you know, be involved and help, the the fact that I have the strength to get up and pray, all of that is because God isn't letting me get swept up. He's not letting me fall apart. It's his strength that he is lending me. And that's been the biggest blessing as far as being able to support all of the people who need the support right now in our lives. So praise God for that. And then the other thing that I've been noticing, especially again, like I feel like it's so much easier now because he is awake, and not that it's easy by any means because he has a long road to recovery ahead, but now that he's awake and you know, talking and my husband got to go see him, and you know, as much as there's still confusion and there's still a lot of recovery that needs to happen, I do feel like it's gotten a little bit easier with that compared to, you know, the first few days where it was like, is he gonna wake up? What's the extent of the damage? Is he gonna remember people? Like, you know, there's just so much uncertainty in those first few days. But I had to keep coming back to Matthew 634 throughout those first days, and it says, Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. And that has kept me so

Staying Present And Rejecting Counterfeit Peace

SPEAKER_00 27:55

present and so able to just tackle like what's going on today. I could worry about six months from now, I could worry about a month from now, and I could ruminate on all of the possibilities of will he wake up, will he not? Will he be able to go back to work? Will he not? You know, is the insurance company gonna cover him or are they gonna have to, is the family gonna have to fight? You know, what's the extent? Is he gonna struggle forever or is he gonna make a full recovery? I could be ruminating on all of that, and it is scripture and it is God's word that has reminded me to stay in the present moment, to face each day as it comes, and just to stay at peace with God's plan, that he is in God's hand, and that ultimately, like my God has the power to transform, to heal, to give and take life, to literally resurrect people from the dead. God has the power for all of that. And so why am I spending time worrying about something that I have no control over when God has the ultimate control and his hand is is is holding this situation, his hand is holding me and my husband and my family, and he's holding my husband's friend and their his family. You know, he's got it all. And so, why am I trying so hard to hold all of these pieces together and worry about imaginary situations that may or may not ever happen when God's promise is like, don't worry about tomorrow. I've got that. You worry about what you're faced with today, you focus on doing your best today to cope, to support, to be there with people, to love people well, to be that safe space and that safe landing, to encourage people, to comfort them, and let me worry about tomorrow. And when he told me that through scripture, it was like, okay, God, like I've got it. And praise God, there's a peace that comes with that, and there's a calmness that comes with that. But it comes from keeping my eyes on Jesus and and on God's promises and on his character and standing on that firm foundation instead of worrying about manifesting an outcome, instead of worrying about how I can manipulate the situation to feel like I'm in control, instead of, you know, trying to send him energy healing that, you know, really doesn't make a difference, at least not long term. You know, when Jesus goes through and heals people in the Bible, they're healed for life. When you go to a Reiki session, you're healed for a week and then things are back. And so standing on the firm foundation of this is who God is, this is the power he possesses, and I trust fully and completely in his will and his hand in this, regardless of outcome, regardless of how it looks to us, right? The the Bible tells us to not lean on our own understanding, but to have faith in him. And that's where peace, true peace, comes from. You can't manufacture that, you can't manipulate that. So, anyway, all of that to say, I don't know how I would navigate this season in my life without my faith. And I am so grateful to have been on this journey and to continue to be on this journey, to continue to be sanctified, to continue to be edified, to continue to witness the power of prayer and fellowship. And yeah, that's that's my update for the week. I will try to be back on a more regular schedule soon here, but I just wanted to give an update and some encouragement, and I will see you in the next episode.