Hello, this is Leslie Kane.
I'm your host of the Why Not Today podcast.
And this is a podcast to celebrate people who have been courageous and said, why not
today?
I started this podcast in honor of my father, Patrick Kane, who often said, why not today?
I am based in rest of Virginia planned community right outside of Washington, DC.
And thanks for joining us today.
And I'm excited for my guests.
And this is actually we're doing a special date.
So if you're following us and listening, when we release them, I'm adding releasing this
a little earlier than my usually deadline because I want this this is perfectly timed
around the holidays in December.
And I'm really excited about my guest who is a friend, their family, I've known her
for since she was a little girl.
And I was talking about like, you never know where you're going to connect with somebody
and where you're going to meet somebody and never know where it's going to take it.
So our guest today is Jody Barrett.
But just talked about where we connected.
I actually met her cousin when I was in college.
And that was a long time ago, a few years ago, and met Jody when she was a little girl
at the house and through really friendships and faith and life, we've become super close.
I feel like you're a younger sister to me, Miss Jody.
So I'm excited to have Jody Barrett.
And she is going to talk today about being courageous, but she's also an author.
And we're going to talk about her book, Jingle and Joy, which is intentional to have it.
This episode is releasing beginning of December so people are the end of November so people
can focus on Jingle and Joy for the holiday.
So yay, Jody, I'm super excited to have you as my guest.
So why don't you introduce yourself, tell us a little about you and maybe a fun fact
you might not know about Jody Barrett.
You know, talking about myself is not the easiest thing to do, but I'm Jody Barrett.
I have a lot of titles.
I am a wife, a mom.
And if I was going to give you a fun fact, it would be that I am a Gigi times two.
So exciting.
Yeah, I have a grandson and now a granddaughter.
And so that's a couple of my titles.
And I'm also a speaker and a writer.
I'm an office manager.
I mean, just we could go into titles, but I say if I was going to really tell somebody
about myself, I would say I am someone who really loves community and connecting with
people.
I was thinking about this just a few minutes ago and I thought, you know, I don't know
how I would do life alone.
And thankfully, I don't have to.
I am surrounded by a lot of great folks and my family will tell you that I will make a
friend with a stranger in a heartbeat.
And I think that's just because of my passion for community.
Totally agree.
And you definitely do that.
So before we start talking about the book and courage, share with us, what does courage
mean to you?
What does courage mean to me?
You know, courage in a nutshell to me is when you are able to move forward in the face of
fear.
You know, like even when you're afraid, you're still willing to put one foot in front of
the other and go in the direction that you're afraid of, whether that's because you know
you're supposed to or whether that's because you just really want to.
You know, it's just standing there and looking fear in the face and saying, I'm not going
to be paralyzed.
I'm still going to go forward.
Right.
And how often do we have to do that in life?
And so many people are they let that fear stop them.
Yeah.
And we always feel better when we do, don't we?
You know, I so much in my life, I think I've had to look fear in the face.
And I'm very thankful for the times when I've been able to just keep pushing forward.
So I would say, yeah.
All right, so you are an author, a speaker, you've got a ministry, so many things.
Of course, you are a wife and a mom and a great, a GG twice and super cute little baby
baby girl that was just born, gosh, a week or two ago.
So I love seeing her pictures.
Not quite.
Almost two weeks, but not quite.
Not quite.
And then sweet little Colton, who I adore, who is two and a half now.
That's right.
Which is crazy to see that.
Two and a half year old fireball.
Yes, he is.
He is full of energy.
So lots of things we can talk about.
And it's funny, I remember, like I've known you for a long, long time, and then obviously
became closer with you when your grandmother was sick and passed away.
But the real, and I, one of those things that I often talk about the time that I feel like,
I know, I knew you're going to be my life forever, but that I really felt like I connected
with you is we started having this discussion.
I remember exactly where I was.
And we started talking about faith.
And we just connected at a faith level that we never have.
And that was just a special moment.
And since then, you know, love your faith walk.
So why don't you talk about courageous things you've done from starting the ministry to,
of course, we want to talk about your book, Jingle and Joy, and how we can have courage
during the holidays.
So I'm just going to let you share, share your heart.
Yeah, you know, it's funny you say share your heart and share your heart about faith, because
when I think about one of the things that I've had to have courage to do, it is to share
my faith.
My faith is in Jesus Christ.
And he calls me to go and tell others about him and the love he has for us.
It's a joy to share about it.
But sometimes I'm afraid to do that.
And funny thing is, is that when the my good, good friend and I started a ministry, we decided
not just to start a faith based ministry that encouraged women to stay in God's Word every
single day and grow in close, close relationship with the Lord, which is, we'll talk about
that.
I'm sure you know, it can be challenging because of all the distractions that we have in the
world.
So but we didn't just do a faith based ministry.
We did a faith and fitness based ministry.
Yeah, so you know, I giggle.
I know I flat out laugh because we took two things that are really hard to stick with.
And we said, let's encourage women to do them together.
And you know what, it must have fit the bill because we had a wonderful time with it.
We had so many women that were interested and we met so many amazing people through
doing that ministry.
We started that over 12 years ago.
We no longer long.
It was 12 years ago and we no longer the fitness part of it, because what we found was what
people's deep down heart need was, was, was the faith part of it.
And we were growing tired.
And we were like, okay, we're burning the candles at both ends.
And this is what they really need.
And this is what they really want.
And this will really fuel all the other parts of their life.
If they can get this, this faith being centered around Jesus, they can get that then all the
other things will fall into place.
And so, yeah, it took a lot of courage to start that with even with someone I was, I
was glad I didn't have to do it.
Yeah, and Joe and Donna was the one that came to you with the idea of the ministry.
Yes.
My good friend Donna at the time we had just met, she had her husband and children had
just moved into our area.
And her husband was a youth pastor at our church.
My daughter was in the youth group.
So they were having like a lake outing one day.
And my husband and I said, you know, let's walk down to the lake.
Let's see how everybody's doing.
Let's get to know Donna and Justin because they were new to the area and they were going
to be working with our daughter.
And Donna looks at me and says, you know, I've been thinking about starting an exercise,
a faith based exercise ministry.
Would you be interested?
And it was just perfect timing.
Some people call things coincidence.
I like to call things God incidents, which is just a play.
Yeah, it's just a play on words.
God incidents.
You know, I said, Donna, I've been praying about a walking ministry because walking was
really, really important to me at the time and still is.
But it just it was like, there it is.
And long, long story I could go through to tell you all the ups and downs that we had
to walk through.
But since we're on the topic of courage, let me tell you one of the things that took the
most courage.
We were looking at a national program that we were going to umbrella under.
And you are required to videotape yourself while instructing an aerobics class.
Oh, wow.
Yes.
Wow.
You didn't go that route.
I know.
We didn't.
However, we did do the video and we did submit it.
And it done as has been filmed it for us.
And he promises that there's no remaining copies.
I don't know if I trust him, but yes, that that took so much courage because I don't
know about you, but, you know, sometimes I'm self conscious.
And so, you know, and so so I'm self conscious maybe about how I sound on the video or how
I looked on the video.
And then you throw aerobic steps.
Oh, my goodness, that was a moment that took some serious courage.
We did.
We did send it off.
And that's that's not why we changed paths.
But that's the thing.
When you're walking a journey and you get to what I call a turning point in the road
and you have decisions about which way to go, that's when you have to lean into your
faith and you step where the Lord directs you, which takes courage to do because often
he calls us into an area that's not our comfort zone.
And we went out of our comfort zone to do what we did.
And if I had Donna here sitting with us, I think she would say the same thing.
We do it all again.
We would do it all again.
Yeah.
So I love the ministry and I've participated a couple of your events.
This was awesome.
And of course, they don't and you guys have done amazing things.
But you then went on to write a book called Full and Joy.
And this is one of my favorites.
And I give it out to tons of people.
I just got a new copy the other day.
So talk about how the book came about and the courage to write the book and publish
the book.
And I know that wasn't always a smooth, easy road.
You know, crazy, I've always wanted to write a book ever since I was a little girl.
The closest that I came to writing before I was out of college and into motherhood was,
you know, poetry in school or essays and things of that nature.
But I've always been one to write privately and just always wanted to write a book, but
didn't know how to go about the process.
Well, God called me into the speaking ministry world and quickly I found out that while other
people enjoyed what you had to say, they wanted to also read your works.
And so I said, you know, it's perfect time for me to pick back up the dream of having
a book.
And then you have to throw in a lot of years in the mix.
Social media has become such a huge thing, right?
It's a place where a lot of people are reading words every single day from, you know, just
a few words to, you know, entire pages.
So I was out on social media because of our ministry sharing what you now see in Jingle
and Joy.
And the subtitle of Jingle and Joy is praying beneath the tree.
And I was sharing about it because I was at home doing it during a time in my life where
all of my family, my immediate family was displaced.
So my husband was overseas because of military duty.
And both of my children had entered those college age years and they had flown the nest
at the pretty much almost the same time.
So there's this big quiet house and there's just this little Jodi and she's sitting in
her house around the holidays alone.
And I was meeting with my person, Jesus, because he never leaves us beneath the tree and praying.
And others were interested in it.
And so I started sharing on social media about it, inviting them to join me.
And the book actually comes three years later from what I'm just describing to you.
And I didn't want to do it.
I wanted to do it, but I didn't want to do it.
Have you ever been there?
A lot.
And so these words from your dad, why not today, I did not know at the time.
OK.
But if I had have known them, they would have been words I would say because they encourage
me now, now that I do know them and in the context of why your dad would use them, I
would say why not today.
So took that three year experience, put it on paper into a book, was about to get the
book to the point that it could be published.
And we had a very tragic event happen in our lives.
One of well, probably the darkest moment of my life.
We lost our son.
We lost our Ryan at 22 years of age.
And I thought there's there's no way I can let this book go out.
And it was scheduled to go out.
And I stood in my kitchen.
I'll never forget it.
Right in the same place that my son had last asked me this question, he said, Mom, how's
your book coming?
And inside my spirit, in the core of my being, I knew that I was supposed to push forward,
that in the face of fear, when it didn't feel right because of what was going on in our
lives, the book was supposed to to go forth that year.
That was in October of the year that the book came out and the book came out early November.
And it was not just when Ryan passed away, it was the end of October.
Right.
It wasn't like the beginning.
So you did it, flipped it pretty fast.
All the work had been done.
Right.
And have you ever had a crazy year?
All right.
That was the craziest year of my life.
I am known for saying that on this side of heaven, joy and pain collide.
They hit head on sometime.
And in August of that year, our daughter got married.
It was the most beautiful occasion.
It was everything that I think she wanted and everything we wanted as a family to be
able to be there in love and support her.
And just a great celebration.
And then just a few months later, we're walking through the darkest time of our life all together,
though.
That community, that community of family and friends.
And we were walking through the darkest time of our life.
And yeah, God said, Jodi, the book is supposed to still happen.
And it did.
I can't explain it except, again, to say that when you are at a crossroad and you're faced
with different directions, it's important to lean in to your faith and move forward
in courage in the directions that God asks you to go.
And I knew that was the direction I was supposed to go with Jingle and Joy.
And you want to hear a crazy, you've got your copy, right?
I do.
OK, so the books arrive on the doorstep.
I don't know exactly when.
If I were to go back to my journals, I could tell you.
But as I tell my grandmother sometimes, the day of the week doesn't matter, right?
It doesn't change the story.
So I get the books in a box on my doorstep, and I go and I open them up and I put them
out because I had some girlfriends coming over to have dinner that night.
We were going to fill the table with just friendship and fellowship and prayer.
And I opened one of the books.
Now remember the season I'm walking through.
And it fell open to day eight.
And so Jingle and Joy has 25 days of praying for other people.
And each day is designated a certain group of people.
And day eight says pray for those who are grieving.
And here I was, Mom, you know, in deep grief because we had lost our Ryan.
And my girlfriend that helped get this to publication, she picked out parts of my writing
to kind of blow up and highlight.
And it says the blown up part says, Lord, help us reach out so no one walks alone through
grief.
And that was part of the prayer I wrote.
Well, can I tell you about the army of people that surrounded me and my family?
Yes, because they loved us.
But people that didn't even know us because they came to know us through the books surrounded
us.
I didn't have to walk through grief alone.
And that's just how it works.
He's just incredible.
And you know, I don't know if it had been the same if I hadn't have stepped out in faith
and finished the book.
You may never have.
And you know, a couple of things you said was in the beginning, you said the interesting
fact about Jodi or to know about Jodi is you love community and connecting with others.
And that was so evident with the book.
So when you decide to go forward with it, it was your girlfriend, people in ministry
and people that surrounded you that encourage you to go forward.
And if you hadn't done those things and stepped out in faith for your ministry, for the fitness
ministry, you never would have met those people.
And if you hadn't spoke, you know, been a speaker, that wouldn't happen.
So how many things had to happen?
And then the fact that they encourage you to get the book out.
And you didn't change anything from the book except for the beginning, right?
Just the dedication, just the dedication.
So everything else is done, which just is so in line with everything else.
And then, yeah, just watching so many people in your community and how many people you've
connected with from, you know, when Ryan passed away to his funeral to still with the golf
tournament that you do in honor of Ryan every year.
Such an amazing community of people that support you and you're not alone.
Now, and, you know, talking about things that we do now to make sure that others aren't
alone, not just in grief, but in all kinds of situations in their lives from this.
Remember where I told you I was?
I was in my home beneath a tree, you know, without my core, without my people.
You know, my core family.
But I reached out on social media to others and saw how much they needed it.
So now it's not just on social media.
It's not just in a book.
December 5th of this year, and we've done this now for four years, there'll be a community
tree to right outside in a field that's not far from our house where we will invite anyone
from the community who wants to come and pray together for community people in community,
people to be in community, people that are in our community, people that the Lord's Word
tells us to first of all, pray for all people.
And that's what the book is about.
And that's what we do.
We do it in our homes, but we also do it in our community because all people doesn't leave
anybody out.
Right.
And I love, I love the tree and the community and I'm excited that I will be there and I
think every year I'll be there for that.
But want to go back a little bit to the book because you and I can talk forever and ever
and ever and I don't want to make this all day.
But so being intentional and courageous and I talked about the other day on my podcast
as we kicked off right after Thanksgiving, we kicked off and talked about being intentional
in December.
And one of the things I talked about was, you know, appreciating the time and being
present with who you're with and present with the time.
And one thing we've talked, I've talked to a lot of people about, I mentioned this the
other day is that enjoy that time with family and friends because you never know when that
dynamic might change.
And like in your case, first your husband was overseas, deployed and your kids were
off doing other things and then your total life completely changed with Ryan passing
away.
But also families like my family now is spread out.
And you know, the last time we were all together in a group, who would have ever thought that
that would be the last, not maybe the last time that everybody because people are growing
up, those things change.
But you know, the premise of jingle and joy is you want to focus on the joy and not the
jingle.
And that's what I talked about the other day, just being intentional in December.
And so let's talk a little bit about courage it takes to pray to spend that quiet time.
I know we talked about a little bit beforehand.
So how would you share that it takes courage to grow your faith and take time for faith
and God and prayer?
I'm going to go to that word that you've said a couple of times intentional.
I have a good friend, Stephanie, that really helped me hone in on what it meant to be intentional
when it comes to spending time with with God, which is is where we want to focus in jingle
and joy.
And it's a great place for us to focus every day of every year.
To be intentional means to on purpose position ourselves where we can be not only in the
presence of someone, but also to be attentively listening to that someone and then being willing
to open ourselves up to that someone.
So that was a lot.
But right.
What does that look like in my life might be the best way to illustrate it.
So I am intentional every morning to get up and I do fix a cup of coffee and then I settle
right back down into a specific place.
It changes from time to time because I'm not I'm not easily.
Well, I just I just like change.
And so I move around, but what's intentional is that I don't start anything else until
I sit in a place and just listen for God.
And the way I listen for him is I open my Bible and I read his word and then I just
let him speak to my spirit.
And then I am intentional to share what's on my heart with him.
So it's like that two way communication.
I'm listening and I'm talking and I'm a talker.
So that part comes easy.
The listening I have to be more intentional about.
Yeah.
So that that's how intentional time for me with God starts every day.
But then the way it continues throughout the day is that I just remember he's always with
me.
And so if you ever had those times where you're thinking, I just need somebody to talk to
and maybe you pick up the phone or maybe you text someone or something like that.
But for me, it's just I just go straight to him and share with him.
And I still may pick up the phone because I love my girlfriends and my people, but just
intentional to keep doing that every single day.
The second thing that you talked about is courage in this intentional relationship.
I think I'd have to rewind so far because now it's like so but I know there's been times
when I've needed that courage to be transparent with God.
But what I've learned is I've grown in my relationship with him is that there's nothing
too big for him and there's nothing that's going to catch him off guard.
There's nothing that's going to make him stop loving me.
And so I don't feel like I have to have as much courage as I used to because I'm just
so comfortable with him.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think the more time you spend with something or someone or doing something, you know, like
we talked about, you got to step out fear and do it.
And maybe the first time you communicated and prayed and the more you do it, the more
comfortable you get.
And it doesn't take as much courage.
And I think that's with anything the more you do it.
Right.
It is once we do it once and then twice.
And you know, the whole faith walk is courage and taking time.
I know you said you do an intentional in the morning and I do the same thing.
But there's some mornings that, you know, I want to I'm a worker, I'm an achiever, I
want to get going.
And that's like, I want to keep going.
I got too many things to do.
But I know if I take the time, then my day is going to be so much better and aligned better
when I take the time.
But sometimes it takes courage to say, all right, and say, why not today and just do
it.
You know, it it I I have those days, too.
And here's the way I look at it.
Remember, our first ministry started with a fitness entity part of it.
So I'm very conscientious of what it means to do things daily, because, you know, we
talk about good nutrition daily, you know, good fitness daily, that kind of thing.
So what I usually tell people is, you know, you'll say you have a couple of those days
where you miss your time, things get in the way, your mind gets busy or what have you.
You don't have to go, well, forget it.
No, you just the next day, it's clean slate and you know, and you start again.
You know, God's so gracious that he's just like, I'm so glad you're back.
You know, I said, right.
It's just like a friend, you know, they're not going to say, you know, I talk a lot about
regret.
And this book I read about regret, they talked about, you know, that person, you haven't
talked to him forever and ever.
And you feel like, oh, I don't want to call him.
I feel bad because I haven't talked to him.
But if things are reversed, and they called you and you had you hadn't talked to him,
you'd be so happy.
You wouldn't be like, why didn't they call me in so many times, you'd be excited to hear
from them.
And you'd be like, I'm going to be with God and spending time.
Pick up where you left off.
Exactly.
Can I take you back because you talked about friends.
So that's a good segue into you mentioned another word.
So that was presence, being, you know, present with the people that you're with.
And so in Jingle and Joy, I actually talk about that in a devotion that's entitled Exchange
Presents, like the things we put in bags and boxes for presents being, you know, with people.
And you know, that is one of the greatest gifts we can give one another is actually
being present when we're with others.
And it's such a challenge.
Not on the little things that ring.
Right.
I was at a family gathering not too long ago, and one of the family members saw me with
my phone in my hand and he said, put that thing away.
And you know, he meant it very kind because he wanted me to be present with the people
that we were with.
And so did I.
I was using my phone in that moment to take some photos so that I could remember some
things from that day.
But so many times it distracts me.
So I'm not even going to pretend that.
My biggest distraction in the morning and starting my day in the right place is, oh,
let me look at my phone real quick.
Well, that takes you down a whole different rabbit trail.
So yeah, so we can go on and on and on.
But I do want to kind of end this sooner than later.
Just I mean, we talked about lots of subjects.
So in the I always share ask people like, what encouragement would you give somebody
to be creative?
OK, so did something recently that I've never done before.
I spoke at a high school graduation service.
Wow.
Yeah.
Here I have this, you know, graduating class and.
I'm going to use them as an example, and it may not surprise you what I say because I've
already mentioned these words before, but if I'm going to encourage you to be courageous,
I'm going to tell you that when you're looking at a turning point in your life, when you're
faced with multiple directions to go and you need to lean in to the Lord and ask him for
direction and you need to be willing when he shows you which way to go to step forward
and even when it looks uncertain or unknown, knowing that he will be with you.
In the faith world, we might would call this courageous faith.
If you don't know the Lord like I do, this this might seem odd.
But I encourage you to know the Lord and to follow him where he leads you, which means
just look in fear in the face sometime and saying God is with me.
I'm going to go that direction.
You know, I always tell people, listen to the first voice, which is usually the right
one.
And then we try to talk ourselves out of that voice.
And yeah, and put our own thoughts and restrictions on it.
So I'm excited for other people to read this book.
So Jingle and Joy, Praying Beneath the Tree, where can they get it and how can they get
it and what can they do with it?
OK.
The biggest and best way to get it because you're not necessarily going to be local to
my area is Amazon.
So just go straight to Amazon and you can get a copy there.
And if you go to our website, FaithfullyFollowingMinistries.org, there's a page there for the book that has
a lot of free resources that go along with the book.
And it's also where you can always find anything that we're sharing.
We like to call them our favorites and our freebies.
There's a couple out right now for Christmas.
You can click on that page as well to connect with me.
Did you ask me that, Leslie?
Did you ask?
No, but they can.
I mean, I was going to ask you that.
And I'm going to share in the show notes and on social media how to connect with you also.
But what's the best way to connect with you, Jodi?
OK.
So the best way to connect with me is on Facebook or Instagram.
So on Facebook, it's FaithfullyFollowing, and on Instagram, it's FaithfulToFollow, and
the two is a number.
So it's FaithfulNumberToFollow.
And those are the places I'm most active and love to connect with people, love to have
conversation there, but also on our website or our blog, FaithfullyFollowingMinistries.org.
And we will link all this, too.
So one question I forgot is actually, too, a comment I'm going to make and a question
I need to connect with is my dad, is one thing that you got me starting doing years ago,
you had it with your ministry.
You had a challenge.
It was January to every day share a verse of scripture.
And you called it verse by verse.
And I did it for a week and then did it for two weeks.
And I've done it so many years.
And I know we've talked about this before.
So every morning when I have my quiet time, whatever I'm reading, whatever scripture,
I always look it up.
I Google it.
And I'm a visual person.
So whatever graphic speaks to my heart, I share that on Instagram and Facebook.
And I know a lot of people listening may have followed it, may have seen it.
But I have had several people, including at that time, my friend's 16-year-old son said
every morning he woke up to see what I posted.
And just recently have said that, that's how they start their day.
So I'll never stop doing that.
So thank you for encouraged me.
So you're the one that started it.
But back to my dad, I always say, how do you connect with my dad?
And the things you said, well, first of all, the first one, community and connection, that
was all Patrick Kane was about.
And so much with that.
And then your heart for your faith, my dad definitely had a strong faith.
And as he had had strokes and things happen, he's like, God's not done with me.
I'm on this side of the grass for a reason.
I got grandchildren to teach and things.
But the other thing is I just have such fond memories of him and your grandmother connecting
and just laughing and having, picking fun on each other.
And just even after my dad had a stroke, I remember being at the beach.
Granny came and hung out with us.
And just to watch them banter back and forth just gave me such joy.
So I feel like, obviously, we go way back.
But that connection to my dad was definitely, there's lots of things.
So thank you, Jody.
And thank you for sharing.
And I hope people listening get the book.
And even if you don't get it beginning of December and you start any time, you can do
jingle and joy any time of the year and pray over and over.
And I love giving this as a gift to people.
A lot of people I know have this.
And if you don't have one and you want me to send you one, I'm happy to.
And I think they're like $10 or less on Amazon.
So it's a great gift to give to a friend.
And I know it's helped lots of my friends go through some hard times in life over the
holidays.
And holidays aren't always easy for people.
That's right.
Leslie, thank you for having me.
It's been a blast.
No, you are welcome.
And we're sure we'll have you back again.
So thanks again, everybody, for listening.
Thanks, Jody.
Of course, you can find us on iTunes, Spotify, Likus, Share Us.
And be intentional in December.
And remember what I shared the other day, like be intentional, enjoy the holiday season.
So enjoy your holiday.
Merry Christmas.
I'm sure there'll be another episode before Christmas.
But thanks again, Jody.
And remember, say why not today?