Your Diagnosis Isn’t Your Identity

What if you could train your response to fear before the crisis comes?

In this episode, we sit down with Jenna Schutt, a former cardiac nurse who learned the answer to that question while fighting for her own life. Diagnosed with a rare and incurable bone-marrow disease, Jenna endured chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant — and in the hospital rooms where fear and “what if” thoughts threatened to overwhelm her, she began deliberately redirecting her mind toward Scripture and what she believed to be true. Over time, that repetition became spiritual muscle memory. It became what she now calls The Joy Reflex — a faith-based framework she uses to help women train peace before panic arrives. Your diagnosis is not your identity. And Jenna’s story is proof. To learn more about Jenna Schutt and to access the free resource she discusses, visit https://www.jennaschutt.com

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Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.

Jenna Schutt:
And I can remember very clearly, me sitting there with a mask on, and he's looking at me and he said, "Jenna, I need you to hear me right now." He said, "This is treatable, but it is not curable. There is no cure." And if I had thought that moment in my kitchen was a before and after, this truly was. I felt like there was just a line drawn in my life, and here I am going from mom and wife and nurse to patient.

Gary Schneeberger:
That's our guest this week, Jenna Schutt, talking about the crossroads she reached when she faced not a single medical setback, but a succession of them. She endured chemotherapy, repeated medical procedures and hospital stays, and ultimately a stem cell transplant. Her experience forced her to confront what happens internally when fear arrives faster than faith and led her to develop the Joy Reflex to build the spiritual muscle memory, to return to faith, peace, and joy when circumstances trigger panic and catastrophic thinking.

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Jenna, it's so wonderful to have you on the podcast, and I'll just read a brief introduction. So Jenna Schutt is a former cardiac nurse, stem cell transplant survivor, Christian speaker, and founder of the Joy Reflex. After being diagnosed at 30 with a rare disease that later became aggressive systemic mastocytosis, she endured years of treatment and a bone marrow transplant. Today, she helps women renew their minds, respond to fear with faith, and take the next faithful step when life feels overwhelming.
So Jenna, I love what you have with the whole Joy Reflex system you have, train peace before panic, practice faith before fear, make joy your reflex. What you talk about, which I think is so impressive that we'll get into, is when you have fear come on, it's just don't let it grow too large. I think of it really like weeding when you feel those first weeds of fear, so to speak, of really dealing with it and praying. So I loved your whole concept, and we'll get into the Joy Reflex here in a bit.
Tell us a bit about yourself. I think I read on your website that you live with your husband and two boys in rural Nebraska?

Jenna Schutt:
Yes.

Warwick Fairfax:
Just tell us what life was like for young Jenna growing up and what were your hopes and dreams and what was your family life just as a kid growing up. What was life like for Jenna?

Jenna Schutt:
Well, I actually was born and raised in Kansas, and then I moved to Nebraska when I got married. So now, I'm a corn husker and I literally live in the middle of a cornfield. If I were to flip my camera, you would see corn because that is what we live in the middle of, and we live on a dirt road, and I absolutely love it. You could walk outside of our house and you would not know that anything in the world was going on because it is just very peaceful outside.
But I was born and raised in Kansas. My grandfather started the church that I was raised in and my father is now the pastor since my grandfather has since passed. So I very much grew up in the faith world. I like to say that I was attending church services in the womb because my mother was a pastor's wife, and so I very much grew up with being the pastor's kid and knowing all about faith. We had services four times a week. So Sunday morning, Sunday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, I was in church. And if it was open, we were there. Kind of my life growing up was very faith filled, and I'm so grateful for that background as I grew up. And now, I am married to a pastor, and his father is also a pastor. So pastors all around.

Warwick Fairfax:
So what is that like... Just knowing a few pastors and we go to a... I think I mentioned a non-denominational evangelical church in Maryland, it's not always easy being, what do they call it, a PK, a pastor's kid, because they expect you to be perfect and know everything. So how did you deal with the pressure of being the kid of the pastor with your friends at school and in church? How'd that all kind of feel?

Jenna Schutt:
Not only was I a pastor's kid, but I'm also an eldest daughter and an eldest granddaughter. So if you want to talk about responsibility and feeling like I'm in charge of everything and feeling all of that on my shoulders, you 100% read that correctly. So I definitely was the one that loved to take care of other people, loved to help other people, and I think probably that has what led me into nursing and to be a nurse because it's always filled my cup to pour out to other people. And I think that you can maybe see that now as the way my life went, starting from just being a nurse to being the patient and now I want to pour out into other people this Joy Reflex and show them how they can be empowered to have that faith, peace, and joy for themselves. And I think that where I started from, just being that pastor's kid and knowing that people's eyes were on me and knowing that I could be the example and to be the example that they could follow, has traveled with me even until today.

Warwick Fairfax:
What's interesting is-

Gary Schneeberger:
I'm going to jump in just for a second, Warwick.

Warwick Fairfax:
Please go ahead.

Gary Schneeberger:
Just a second.

Warwick Fairfax:
Sure, sure.

Gary Schneeberger:
I also am a PK, a policeman's kid.

Jenna Schutt:
There you go.

Gary Schneeberger:
So I know of what you speak in a different way, but I know of it.

Jenna Schutt:
Yes, yes.

Warwick Fairfax:
That is very funny. Certainly, the eyes were on you growing up, which-

Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed.

Warwick Fairfax:
What's interesting, Jenna, is that some people rebel against that whole upbringing and the spotlight being on you, but it seemed like you rose to the occasion like, "Okay, I'm the daughter of a pastor, and I'm going to do my level best to care for other people and be somebody that my parents would be proud of," and so you didn't rebel. It's like you almost rose to the occasion and the role, which not everybody does. That's kind of remarkable. Is that just in your DNA? I mean, not everybody makes a choice you made, which is kind of amazing.

Jenna Schutt:
Yeah. I think some of it is just my upbringing. My family and I were extremely close. My grandpa, who was the founder of the church, and I were extremely close. And I can always remember my grandpa's house was the parsonage that was right next to the church, and his door was always open, and his Bible was always on his lap and it was always open. And he would have people come in all the time, wanting to hear what he had to say, and what he had to say was always what the Word had to say.
I can remember going down there. If I wasn't feeling well or anything like that, you'd go to your grandparents' house, and so I would be laying on the couch, and it would be phone call after phone call of people wanting to know advice and hear what he had to say. He always had the Word open, and it was always going back to the Word. And I think just growing up under that and seeing that example for myself, that really was a big way to grow up and a big example to live through and to live by. And I think that's part of the reason why I am the way that I am, is because of those examples that were lived out in front of me.

Warwick Fairfax:
Before we get to the crucible, talk about what led you to being a nurse and what kind of nurse were you. So just talk about just the background you were in when your crucible happened, so what led you to be in nursing and what that look like once you're a nurse.

Jenna Schutt:
I had thought that I wanted to be a teacher until I was a teacher's aid for a little while, and then I quickly learned that was not for me, even though now I homeschool my children, but I think it's a different situation when it's your own children. I knew I wanted to help people, and so where do you go from there, from thinking you know what you want to do to figuring out what it is that you're supposed to do? I had gone to some college classes, and one of the college classes I went to was anatomy and physiology or A&P, which is a pretty good one to figure out if you like this whole medical side or not.
My mom tells the story of when I came home from one of the classes, and we dissected the sheep's brain, and I just thought that was the coolest thing. My eyes were just glowing and talking about this. And my mom looked at me and she goes, "Yep, you're in the right spot. You're doing what you need to do." And so not just the science part, but the science part to me was just amazing. And to see how the body works together and how all these parts have to be working in concordance with another in order to function correctly was just amazing to me.
And then as I did become a nurse and started through my specialties and to see what it was that really excited me, I ended up in the cardiology world. So I was a cardiac catheterization lab nurse, which is kind of a mouthful to say that I was the nurse who took the patient who was in the middle of having an active heart attack, and I would be the nurse that would take them into the lab and assist the doctors as they were the ones who were opening those arteries to restore blood flow to the heart. I was very used to being in the middle of these emergent situations, trying to get that knowledge to that person who was in the middle of a heart attack while keeping them calm and also working with the doctors and doing all of the necessary things as well.
As I started to have children, I moved from that position to a position with less overnight call. Because heart attacks don't happen on a nine-to-five schedule, so you would be on call, you'd have to go in at all times of the night. So I moved to the cardiovascular clinic where I worked really closely with the doctors and more with educating patients, which again I loved. And that is really where I was at when I did receive that diagnosis.

Warwick Fairfax:
Just before we get there, tell me, so you got married and have a couple of sons, do you?

Jenna Schutt:
Yeah, I have two boys.

Warwick Fairfax:
What stage of life are they all at?

Jenna Schutt:
So now, my children are 7, almost 8 years old, and 9. They're 18 months apart, so they're very close.

Warwick Fairfax:
Very active time in life. And you met your husband... I guess you moved to Nebraska, you met him in Nebraska? What's your [inaudible 00:10:59]-

Jenna Schutt:
We actually met online, believe that or not. We met on... Heads up to christianmingle.com because they connected me and my husband. I always like to say that our parents got us together because my mom saw an ad on TV for Christian Mingle, and his mom saw the same ad, and they both were like, "You need to get on there and you need to see what there is." And so we both got on and met each other, and one thing happened. We just talked on the phone and we just talked for hours, and it was just this instant connection. And I could remember our very first date when we met in person, he came and he actually stayed at the parsonage with my grandparents, first time. On our very first date, he told me, "I don't feel like I'm supposed to be anywhere else. So if this goes any further, you're moving to me." It was pretty evident right away that if I was going to go any further, I was moving six hours. It just worked out, and we got married. We've been married almost 13 years now.

Warwick Fairfax:
Just talk about the crucible because you went from being somebody that dealt with people in the most challenging moments, certainly when you're in the cardiac unit. What happened? It seemed like the roles were flipped. You were no longer kind of over the patient looking at them, talking to them. You were on the other side. So what happened?

Jenna Schutt:
I had spent a lot of my life performing strength, and I knew how to keep going. I knew how to do all of my responsibilities. I had really prided myself on being able to carry it all, to hold it all, to help other people, to hold my family up. And I knew how to say, "I'm fine," and keep moving on to the next thing. And then all of a sudden, you get this diagnosis, and I was only 30 years old. Both my kids were still in diapers at the time. And to switch that perspective from being the nurse taking care of the patient in the bed to being the patient in the bed and to have all of those things that you see in your mind as to where your life is going to go just completely switch in the snap of the finger and you're living in this before and after, it really opened my eyes to several things. One of the biggest things was just to have compassion for people that are going through that in a way that you can never have just by helping them, but by living it.

Warwick Fairfax:
So you talk about the diagnosis you had, because it was a journey. I think you had abdominal symptoms, and it sometimes happened. It wasn't an instant diagnosis. So what was the journey? Because that probably was pretty tense at the time because you're a nurse and you write about this. You're probably thinking about the 85 things it could be and drawn a decision tree, "If this and that, or this and that," which sometimes knowledge is helpful, sometimes there's a downside to knowing a whole lot. So just talk about just that journey of figuring out what exactly was wrong.

Jenna Schutt:
Yes. Well, definitely to your point, knowledge is not always power, and sometimes it can definitely be more anxiety-producing to have all of these what ifs and to know the knowledge behind it. And yes, I did have a lot of abdominal symptoms. I had been on some medications for a sinus thing, so I had just attributed all of the symptoms that I had to a reaction to a medication. To be honest, my doctor agreed and she said, "Let's just do our due diligence. Let's do some lab work and some other testing, make sure there's nothing else going on, although I agree with what you think it probably is," and so we started down this journey of figuring out what it was that was the cause. Most of my lab work came back normal except for one number, and that pointed us towards a gallbladder issue.
And I can remember just on the inside, that inward, knowing that it wasn't my gallbladder, but I didn't know what it was. But I said, "Okay, an ultrasound is not invasive. Let's just go do that." Did the ultrasound, and they showed a mass on my kidney. And she said, "We can't see what this mass is with the ultrasound. You're going to have to go to do a CT scan." And I definitely attribute the CT scan with one of the first miracles I saw, because here I am having all these abdominal symptoms and then they give you these two huge bottles of chalky contrast that you have to chug and then also keep down the entire time. And so I'm praying, "Okay, Lord, help me keep this down and help me be able to actually drink this so they can see what they need to see," and that was definitely the first miracle was just I actually kept it down.
Did the CT scan, came home. And I talk a lot about this moment where I'm in my kitchen, my husband's holding my three to six month old, and my toddler boy is standing right beside them, and I get the call. In my nurse brain, I should have known that when my doctor is calling me about the scan an hour after it's done and it's my doctor on the phone, not a nurse, just the doctor's on the phone, I should have known that it wasn't good news. But in my mind, I just hadn't put those things together. And she told me, "The mass on your kidney is benign. There's nothing we need to be concerned about." And so I'm getting ready to get off the phone. I say, "Okay, great. Wonderful. Praise the Lord," click. And she goes, "Hold on, wait just a second."
And she went on to tell me that there was infiltrates in my bones, that my liver was enlarged, my spleen was enlarged, and I had lymph nodes enlarged all around my body, and later would come to find out that the reason I had all these stomach issues was because the lymph nodes had enlarged so much around my stomach that it was like a boa constrictor and it was just squeezing my stomach so incredibly tight. And then from there, we moved to oncology where I did receive the diagnosis.

Warwick Fairfax:
And what was it that you had?

Jenna Schutt:
It's kind of a mouthful, but it's a bone marrow disease called systemic mastocytosis, and it is a mast cell disorder. So we all have mast cells in our bodies, but this is where the mast cells kind of take over the bone marrow. And what mast cells do is they release histamine in a inflammatory or a allergic response. It tends to release histamine when it's not supposed to be, releases an enormous amount. And because it's in the bone marrow, it can go anywhere and everywhere that it wants to go.

Warwick Fairfax:
So what happened then? You got the diagnosis, and what were the next steps? What were you thinking, feeling, fearing?

Jenna Schutt:
Well, when I met with the oncologist, he had thought it was a B-cell lymphoma, and that was the direction that we were leaning. But he said, "We are going to have to do a lot of testing to figure out what this is." That first week, it was just test after test, after test. And I had a bone marrow biopsy, a PET scan, a scope, and then a long needle-guided biopsy. They were supposed to do that guided biopsy, and he had told me, kept looking at the images, looking at the scans, and the doctor said, "I cannot do this in good faith." And he said, "Where I need to go with my needle is between your kidney and your spinal cord. If I am off and I hit either one of those things, it's going to be very, very serious." So he said, "We're not going to do that."
So they took me back to my room, which I'd been waiting all day to have this procedure. They had had some emergencies come in, and so I had had nothing to eat. It's 5:00 PM. I am so hungry. And I remember the doctor came and he said, "Hey, I talked to your oncologist, and I just wanted to let you know that we already have a diagnosis, so this wasn't necessary for us to do anyway," and he rattled off, "Masto, da, da, da, da, da." I had never heard... didn't know, hadn't heard anything from oncology, so I am just spinning. From my nurse, I knew masto meant something in the bone, something with the bone marrow. And I asked my husband, I said, "Did you hear what he said?" And my husband, who's not medical, he said, "I heard it. I don't know what it is." And I said, "Well, I don't know either, but I can look it up." And he was like, "No, no, no," he said, "we're not going to Google ourselves into oblivion."
And so I'm sitting there at the restaurant finally getting to eat, and the hostess comes up, and I'm just bawling because I know it's not good, but I don't know what it is, and fear is trying to write this ending. We haven't even begun yet and fear's already writing the ending. And my husband says, "We are not going to go there. We're going to just take one step. We're going to believe what God's word says. We are going to just go with the next thing in front of us." And the next thing in front of us was waiting until the weekend was over to get the diagnosis.

Warwick Fairfax:
That must have been one of the longest weekends of your life [inaudible 00:20:06] waiting.

Jenna Schutt:
It was a long weekend. I go to church on Sundays and I can remember going into the church service. And my husband is the worship pastor, so he leads us in song. He was singing, and it was just this peace. I can remember walking in, and I was just so concerned about what was going to happen and I was so tired from all of the testing that I had gone through and I was sore and I was in pain. Just to have that peace come over me was such a blessing and that carried me through to Monday.

Warwick Fairfax:
Wow. So, okay, it's Monday and you get the diagnosis, and then what happens?

Jenna Schutt:
Yes. So I went into the oncology office and he, again, was under this impression it was a B-cell lymphoma. And he told me, he said, "The good thing about B-cell lymphoma, it's treatable and it's curable." And he said, "We'll tackle it when we get there." And then I go in and he said, "Well, it's not a B-cell lymphoma." I said, "Okay, well, what is it?" And he said, "Well, it's systemic mastocytosis." And I can remember very clearly me sitting there with a mask on and he's looking at me and he said, "Jenna, I need you to hear me right now." He said, "This is treatable, but it is not curable. There is no cure." And if I had thought that moment in my kitchen was a before and after, this truly was. I felt like there was just a line drawn in my life, and here I am going from mom and wife and nurse to patient.
So we very quickly started moving to, "What do we do now? Now, we know what this is, but how do we treat it?" And so I was sent to Mayo Clinic. And at the time, it was dormant, so we just did some over-the-counter medications and we were just watching it, but very quickly it became aggressive. And then we started having to really get into the big, heavy treatments. Definitely, chemo was not my first choice. It really started with abdominal symptoms again, and so I went to see just my family doctor and he had gotten in this mindset of IBS, "This is IBS, this is what this is." I knew again in my inside that it was not IBS. And I can remember having to be such a strong advocate more than I had ever had to advocate for myself or any patient that I had ever taken care of before. And it was a couple of weeks of advocating for, "I need more scans. I need more imaging. We've got to do more. Something's not right."
That doctor had just had it in his brain that, "This is what this is." And so there was a point where I called and I said, "I appreciate everything you've done, but I think you're going to have to refer me to someone else because we are not seeing eye to eye and I just don't feel like this treatment is doing what it's supposed to do." And then somehow miraculously, he decided that a CT scan was needed, and so went to CT scan and I'd had all these abdominal symptoms, as I mentioned, and it was because my liver had been shutting down.
And so I called, and he called me, and I called Mayo Clinic and called my other doctor. I got in to see oncology, but I still remember that doctor calling me and he said, "Did you see the scan?" I said, "Yeah, so it's my liver. It's ascites," which is this buildup of fluid in your stomach from your liver not functioning correctly. And still after he was looking at the scan, told me, "I still don't think it looks like ascites," and I knew we have to move on. We have to move on.
So then, that's when we started to have those really hard conversations. I had my first round of IV chemotherapy during COVID, so then we faced a whole other battle. Because if you remember back in those times during COVID, not only was there an enormous amount of fear around COVID in and of itself, but there were a bunch of supply issues, getting things, and the chemotherapy that I needed was a supply issue. So my oncology team had a certain number, and the hospital had a certain number, and they couldn't come together. And so we're waiting and waiting, and finally the doctor said, "I'm just going to have to put you as an inpatient, and you're going to have to be in the hospital." So I was in the hospital for six days, and I was told not to leave my room, because there was COVID patients in the hospital.

Warwick Fairfax:
Oh my gosh. I know during those times, sometimes family members couldn't visit.

Jenna Schutt:
Yes. And I didn't have my kids come, so we just did the FaceTime thing.

Warwick Fairfax:
You couldn't have your husband come into the [inaudible 00:24:52]-

Jenna Schutt:
My husband was okay, but that was all really that we had come in, and he had to wear a mask and he had to be very careful. I didn't want him bringing anything home to my kids. I didn't want my kids coming. So here I am having chemotherapy, and my mind is going to my children and my husband and protecting them. I think as a mom, you don't see things through your own eyes. You see them through the eyes of your children, and you want what's best for them, and you're trying to protect them even though you're still fighting for your life.

Gary Schneeberger:
I don't know if it's a strange way, but as you look back, did that moment that you just described, what was going on with COVID, did that help you get the focus off of yourself in a sense, off of what you were going through, and put it on, "Oh yeah, I'm responsible for these children too"? I mean, I would think knowing how you want to help people, that may have, I don't know, shaken you loose to focus your attentions on things that weren't wrong with you.

Jenna Schutt:
For me, I always do that. And that's part of the problem my husband and my mom always have to kind of snap me out of and saying, "You need to focus on yourself for a few minutes. It's okay for you to go rest," because I always want to do everything for my kids and for my husband and for my house and for all the things. And so it takes a lot for me to step back and say, "I need to take care of myself," because what's inside of me is to help other people and to help my kids and make sure everybody has everything that they need before I take care of myself. And that was something that was a very big lesson I had to learn out of necessity, was that my value and my worth is not tied to what I can do for others and what I can give out.

Warwick Fairfax:
So you were going through this terrible crucible, and your mind must have gone down a whole bunch of what ifs, "Will I survive this?" You had kids that were like babies or toddlers, "Am I going to be able to raise my kids or will somebody else?" No mother, matter how wonderful the support team you have, wants anybody raising your kid is other than yourself. What were all those what ifs going through? Because it must have been... I think you talk about this, the physical pain and challenges was one thing. But the whole mental, spiritual, that must have been something it's hard to describe. It must have been just a massive challenge.

Jenna Schutt:
It was. The picture that you saw, I didn't lose my hair in my first round of chemo. I actually lost it during stem cell transplant. So I think that was almost a little bit more difficult because, from the outside, nobody could tell that anything was going on. I looked normal, I looked healthy, I looked strong. And on the inside, I was so tired and I was so weak and I was so exhausted from not only the natural medicine that had been coming in, but from all of these responsibilities that I was still trying to hold. And it was difficult for me to give some of that control up.
I can remember my mom coming to help me and we potty trained my three year old in the middle of chemo. In between chemo sessions, we're potty training my three year old child. To say I need help, it was hard for me, and it still sometimes is difficult for me, but it was very necessary. And I had to learn that if I'm still holding all of the weight, if I'm still trying to hold all of the control, then I can't have help with it because you can't have it both ways.

Warwick Fairfax:
Eventually, you're able to manage your condition and move forward. How are you able to kind of move forward both physically, but also spiritually and mentally? It sounds like you had to shift your thinking, you can't do it all. If somebody else is helping a kid learn to ride a bike and it's not you or whatever it is, take them to the first day of school, doesn't mean you're a terrible mother. I mean, just sort of learning that to give up on, not give up, but to let go of having to do everything, how did you handle that? Because I think that was really the genesis of what you do with the Joy Reflex. So what were some of the lessons you learned as you began to have treatment to make you better, but then there's almost the treatment to help mentally and spiritually to, I won't say make you better, but somehow change your thinking?

Jenna Schutt:
Well, I definitely talk a lot about neuroplasticity. I think that's from my nursing brain, so my nurse wants to go towards the science. So we know from science that your brain can be retrained. You can retrain those neural pathways. But I also go back to God's word, which has been saying that for a very, very long time. And if we look at one of the verses, it says, "To be transformed by the renewing of your mind," so to literally be changed by changing the way that you think. And if you look, I'm kind of a Bible geek, so I love to look at the etymology of words. And so if you look at the word renewing, it is the similar word to renovate. We renovated our 100-year-old-plus farmhouse during the middle of chemo and transplant. Why we did that? Lord only knows why we took that on, but we did.
And I talk about the similarities between renovating and between changing your mind. What's one of the big things we have to do is recognize what needs to be changed. That was a big turning point for me was to have my eyes open to what it was that really needed to be changed. One of the things I talk about a lot is that faith doesn't deny the reality that you are in, but it will determine how you're going to walk out that reality. I think there's a lot of faith world right now and has been that doesn't want to say what the hard thing is. We don't want to talk about those difficulties, those struggles, those circumstances. But I truly believe that we can recognize the hard that we're in without staying there, and that's the way that we start addressing it.

Warwick Fairfax:
So how did you do that in your case? Because I think I've read that obviously your husband, life partner, I mean, it was sort of a collective journey. As you would, I'm sure if he was on the other side of the bed, so to speak, he would have probably done the same thing, I'm sure. There were some things that he said that were very helpful in terms of scripture and just dealing with thoughts and fears, so talk about that. Because again I'm sure if the roles were reversed, you would have done the same thing, I think [inaudible 00:32:14]-

Jenna Schutt:
I hope I would. I think I would have. I think as a nurse, I would have been probably trying to take care of all the things, but he helped so much. I can remember being in the hospital and I was in and out of consciousness and I would wake up and I would see the vital signs machine and I would know I'm not doing very well. And I can remember all of those what-if thoughts that you had mentioned, especially about my children and missing their first day of school and missing their weddings and missing... Fear is trying to write this future that hasn't even hardly begun. My kids were still in diapers when I got diagnosed. And I can remember calling my husband and saying, "I don't know what to do," again, having to fight those feelings of my faith being a failure because I grew up in the faith, so I should know, and those thoughts of, "You should know better. You should know what to do. You should know where to go. You should know how to fix this." But I didn't.
I knew a lot about faith, but I didn't know as much about how to walk it out when my own heart was knocking at the door. And my husband answered and he said, "Well, what you're going to do is you're going to get in God's word." I would play those verses and I would play my pastor's messages and I would read when I could read. And there were times when I was so tired, I couldn't read, I was just half asleep, but I would have my husband or my mom just read to me stories of encouragement, stories of other people who had battled things similar and made it out on the other side. What I was really doing in that moment, which I didn't realize until later when I started writing, was that I was training my brain where to go when fear started to hit, and I was training my brain to go to those things that God's word says and to go towards faith and joy and peace instead of all the what-if questions that kept trying to hit.

Warwick Fairfax:
See, what you're saying is so profound. In my own life, I'd have to say, what you're saying is so profoundly true is I think of it, I think I used this analogy earlier, like weeding, when those first fears come up and... Like you, I mean, I'm not medically trained, but I'm a strategic thinker by nature, so I will naturally go to 100 different what ifs and all the bad things can happen. We're trying to fix a problem or reconcile with somebody or whatever it is. And I'm thinking, "Okay, but if this doesn't happen, all these terrible things can happen." And I've mapped out a very detailed painting, if you will, that there's probably 100 different horrific paintings of 100 different outcomes, all of which are really scary and awful.
And you write about this. What's the next step that I need to take? And what happens after that is unknowable like, "Is there somebody I need to talk to?" I don't know how that's going to go. I just feel led to talk to that person. Okay, that's the first step. What's going to happen after that? Who knows? God knows, we don't. But it's just training your brain to ignore all of the what ifs and read a scripture or inspirational story that you think is relevant and just, "Okay, what's the next step? Okay, I can't have that meeting until next Wednesday. Okay, I'm going to let it go until then. And just every time it counts up, no, I'm going to pray."
In my case, sometimes I can be anxious about things. I'll say to my wife, "Gale, I'm anxious about this." Sometimes I'll say, "I'm feeling bad, I'm not quite sure what it is, but can we talk about it?" And she knows me, and she figures it out. Then I ask, "Do you mind praying for me?" I'm not stupid enough to say, "Oh, I shouldn't have my wife pray for me." Why not? I need all the help I can get, and so I'll say that and vice versa. So does that make sense? I mean, it's maybe a similar approach, maybe different language, but just stopping those weeds get out of control and those embers becoming a forest fires. Is that kind of in the same zip code of what you try to do?

Jenna Schutt:
100%. And I love the Bible verse that talks about His word is a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.

Warwick Fairfax:
Amen.

Jenna Schutt:
Because a lot of us want it to be a floodlight and we want to see the whole path, but a lamp is only going to light up the next step that you need to take. And he's standing right there with you and he's got that light and you're walking with him, but you're going to have to trust him that he's going to know the step after and the step after that and just have that peace to take the next faithful step.
And to your point exactly is you can have a lot of different faithful steps. That can be reaching out to someone for prayer. It could be going to a doctor. It could be making an appointment. It could be praying. It could be finding a scripture verse. It could be reaching out to your faith community. Mine was so important. And so my faithful step may not be your faithful step, and that's okay. It's just that we're taking those faithful steps one step at a time. We're not trying to take the whole staircase in one leap, but we just know that we can just take the next one and the next one after that.

Gary Schneeberger:
Why is that so difficult for people? Because it makes so much sense when you say it. I mean, it makes sense to me. Who is a jump the whole staircase guy, right? What makes it so hard to take one small step at a time and not try to get the whole... They say, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? I want to eat the whole elephant in one shot. So why is that so hard, do you think?

Jenna Schutt:
I think that's because we want to have an element of control. Because when we feel like we're in control of the narrative, we feel like we can control the outcome, but that's unfortunately not always the case. We don't always get to know the next 10 steps. We don't always get to control every outcome, but I can just be responsible for my part. And I talk a lot... I love to talk about natural things in the way that we look at spiritual. Jesus did the same thing. He used parables for the same reason, because they're very relatable.
I like to say, if you walked into a gym for the first time, you never worked out in your life, you would probably look at all the dumbbells and you're not going to go for the 100 pound dumbbell and try to lift it first and say, "I'm just going to take this and we're going to go to town. We're going to do curls and squats and all the things with this 100 pound dumbbell." You might not even be able to lift that 100 pound dumbbell, but you can go to where you can start, which for me, I've had to start over so many times with the ups and downs of my health that there were times when I was lifting a soup can and that was as much as I could do. But I knew that that's where I was at, and at least I was doing what I could.
Most of the times in the spiritual or in our own minds, we want to go straight to that 100 pound weight. We want to do as much as we can, as quick as we can, and we want to just fast-track it. But we have to start where we are and we have to build up to where we are. We don't feel bad when we're going to the gym for the first time knowing that we are where we are. We're just happy that we started and we're confident that we did something. In the spiritual and in our mind, we have to do those same principles and say, "You know what? I may have not had every single right thought today. I may have had some anxious thoughts, but I did X, Y, and Z to start training my brain to go to the right thing. And I'm going to keep doing that and pick it up tomorrow."

Warwick Fairfax:
It's such a helpful thought that you have, Jenna. I mean, there's several things I think of. One is really to retrain your brain, retrain your spiritual framework to tell yourself, "I'm not in control. God is. I want to control lots of things. There's many things I can't control. I hope and pray I'm there for my son's weddings. I'm doing everything I can to have that happen, but I don't know. There's a few years left." Or college or whatever they do, and it's like, "Okay, I'm going to focus on what I... I can't control that. That's years into the future, but what can I control today?"
Your identity, I think you mentioned, was a lot of being the caregiver. Well, you can care for a lot of people, but not all the time. When you're in chemo and not doing well, you're not going to be able to do a lot of caregiving, I'm just saying, and that's okay. That's where God has you for that moment, and your identity is not in being a caregiver. It's being, in your case, a daughter of the king, if you will. And then the days when you feel anxious, rather than saying, "Well, I thought I was a solid believer. I guess I got an F today," it's like, "No, no, no. I'm human." Give yourself grace because you know the Lord will give you grace. Does that make sense? It's like giving yourself grace on the bad days, realizing, "Okay, my identity is not in caring for everybody in the planet. I can't do that." Did you find you had to rewire not just your brain, but almost your spiritual framework, if you will?

Jenna Schutt:
100%. And going back to the natural, if you were trying to eat healthier, let's say, and that was your goal and you were going to do that and that was what you were going to really train yourself to do and you had a wonderful day where you had all of the right foods. And then the next day you decided, "I'm going to eat a whole king-sized chocolate bar," well, okay, you didn't do so great that day. But the next day you say, "I'm going to pick it up back again, and I'm going to keep going," because it is not about every single second being perfect. It's about consistently making those changes so that your brain gets consistently trained to know where to go. So, "Okay, I didn't have a great thought right now. But the next one, I'm going to work on being great. Tomorrow, I'm going to continue on making those things great." There's that saying, "Done is better than perfect," because if you get yourself in this loop of, "I have to be perfect and every thought has to be perfect," then anytime you fail, you can derail yourself.
I've talked to my young children about this, that if you had $100 in the bank and it was wonderful and you were so excited about this $100, but you had two dirty pennies, would you let those two dirty pennies ruin that entire $100, or would you just be glad you have this $100 that you can go spend? In the natural, my sons were like, "Well, I would just be glad I had $100." I said, "Well, exactly. So don't let this small moment of the day ruin everything that you've built and that you are building."

Warwick Fairfax:
It's so true. I want to talk a bit about the Joy Reflex, and I think we've really been talking about it, but one of the things that... It's a lot in the self-help, inspirational space of gratitude. Periodically, I do that when I... There are all different tools that can help. You can pick the tool you feel led to at the time.
But yeah, I remember being on an hour drive from the airport at one point a while back, and I just felt that I'm just going to, for the next hour, think of all the things that I'm grateful for. I'm thinking about, "Well, gosh, I'm married to my wife 37 years, and I'm so blessed. My dad was married three times, and mother, twice, so I don't take that lightly. The wonderful kids we have, my oldest son got married a few months ago, just all of the people in my life, college in England, the evangelical Anglican church I went to..." I just went through all the different stages of my life, how God added in and was so faithful, and an hour went in a nanosecond. I was just letting my mind drift from one grateful thought to the next of how He was faithful to me my whole life. Does that kind of make sense?
I mean, I'm sure you probably do that too. I mean, there are various tools that we can have that can... It's hard to be down after about an hour thinking about how faithful God has been to you. At that point, you just... Joy can't help but creep in. So just talk about that as well as some of the themes in the Joy Reflex. I think it really brings together all these strands and to try to help other people through the lessons that you've learned through your journey.

Jenna Schutt:
Yes. I think really it sounds like what you're saying is just that shift in perspective. And so choosing what you're going to focus on can change the perspective of how your day is going. To have that mindset of, "Okay, for this amount of time, I'm going to focus on X, Y, and Z, whether that's thankfulness or whether that's just being present in the moment. So I can't figure out the next 10 years, but I know what I'm going to do right now, and I can be present and thankful for where I'm at right now." And so that really is going back to training the reflex. It is telling your mind where it's going to go and then repeatedly doing that over and over again until it becomes a practice, until it becomes what your brain knows how to do, and that is how you get better at everything else in the natural.
You see these very talented basketball and football players, and how did they get that way? They practiced when they felt like it, and they practiced when they didn't, and they kept practicing over and over and over again until those rhythms became so well known in their brain that they don't even really have to think a lot about that motion. They just do it because they've done it so many times. And that is really the true heart between the Joy Reflex is training your brain so well that when life hits and hard things hit, you have trained it to go towards faith, peace, and joy so often that your brain and your body and your spirit knows the motion.

Warwick Fairfax:
I'm sort of reminded of something that we had a guest on the podcast, J.S. Park, who's a chaplain at a level 1 trauma center in Tampa and a person of faith. He talked about not really moving on from grief. Because he's a chaplain, you see people, dealing with people dying and families every week, every day. And he used this expression moving with rather than moving on, and I love that concept. I think in the context of what you're talking about with the Joy Reflex... Maybe you've got that hospital test that's going to come up in a week, but not a whole lot you can do until then. So you're praying about it, you're looking at scripture, but there may be other things that you need to do in life, and maybe it's read a bedtime story to one of your kids or whatever it is.
I tried to do that in my own life. If there are things I can't control, are there things I feel led to do now? That helps at least. Another tool for me of if I'm focusing on something else and it's something I'm not trying to replace it, but I feel led, well, there's something I feel that I need to do. It's part of maybe my work or being with family. Does that kind of make sense? It's just putting your whole life on hold as opposed to, "Okay, some things I can't do, but maybe there are some things I feel called to do." Does that kind of make sense?

Jenna Schutt:
I remember when I got the phone call that I was going to have to see the oncologist for the first time, and she had told me, "I can't get you in until Monday," and it's Thursday. So I am thinking, "Oh boy, I have to get through four days of thinking and planning and et cetera."
Something that I talk about is that I didn't have Monday's answers, but I had Thursday's grace. Being able to walk in the grace that you have for today and know I can't do a single thing about Monday except for just give it to the Lord and say, "Okay, God, I know that you're here with me, and I have things I have to do on Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday, and I have things that I have to do, life responsibilities, and I don't want to walk out Monday's future on Thursday. I want to take what is here today, enjoy it, and then move on and know that I've given it to you, know that I'm doing everything I can for Monday, but I'm going to be in Thursday because Thursday is where I'm at," I think that's kind of what you're saying is that it's so important to not try to have control about those things that haven't even happened yet because that really takes away from today.

Gary Schneeberger:
We do a thing with all guests. We have them fill out a form, and you filled out a form, Jenna. One of the things we say, if we could only ask you one question, and we asked you a lot more than that so far, this is the question you said you wanted to be asked, and I'd love to know why you wanted this to be the one question and what your answer would be, and that's this, it's, how do you keep the hardest thing that happened to you from becoming the thing that defines you? Why is that such a pivotal question for what you're doing with your life now and what you've been through in your life before?

Jenna Schutt:
One of the reasons I think that question is so important is because when hard things happen, it's so often we want to make that our identity. I don't want people to look at me as the stem cell transplant girl. I don't want them to look at me as the chemo girl or any of those things. I want people to see me as the joy girl. That's the girl that talks about joy. That's the girl that talks about how we can have peace and faith and joy. Why that's important to me is that you don't have to live in the identity of those things that have happened to you. You can move from those things. Yes, those things may change your life. I know my diagnosis changed my life. I'm still living with graft-versus-host disease. I still take oral chemo every day. I still have IV infusions every day. But I think if you've heard me talking for the last 45 minutes or so, that is not what my focus is. That is not who I see myself as.
I want people to know that they can have these things happen. It doesn't have to become your identity. It doesn't have to be your entire life. You can continue on. You can retrain yourself. You can be that person that has moved on, not erasing it, you're never going to be able to erase that and you're not going to be able to wipe it from your memory. Like you had said, you like sci-fi movies. Well, it's not Men in Black where you get to push the button and it just erases that last several moments of your life. But we do get to walk out our identity and what we are, and that's what I want.

Warwick Fairfax:
Boy, that's so profound. I mean, we could all learn so much from that thought is your identity is not in, as you say, being a stem cell patient and a chemo patient. Listeners and viewers would know having grown up in this very large family business in Australia, my identity is not the 26 year old that launched this $2.25 billion takeover to change management, bring the ideals of the company back with the founder, and failed. No. I mean, that's a lot of years ago now. It's 30 years ago or more. It's a long time.
A husband, father, and elder at my church, we have this podcast, I mean, a lot of things I do. It's really trying to help you understand that you're not defined by your worst day, that your worst day is not your identity. That's not who you are. I mean, in your case, you're a wife, a mother, you're a speaker, you're a coach. You help women deal with anxiety and challenge. I mean, there's a whole lot to who Jenna Schutt is, and it's not stem cells, it's not chemo. That's not who you are. Yes, you're a child of God, but you're somebody that makes a difference in so many people's lives. Does that kind of make sense? I'm sure that's probably how you try to rewire your brain, 'cause that's who I am.

Jenna Schutt:
Yeah. I want what has happened to bring meaning without having ownership. What happened to me did shape me. It changed my life. It changed my perspectives. It taught me things. It helped me to grow in my faith, and the Lord has used that. There's that verse that says, "What the enemy meant for evil, the Lord will use." And I praise the Lord that He is able to use these things that have happened, but that doesn't mean that it is who I am. It means that I get to use those things and have that have meaning without being ownership of me.

Gary Schneeberger:
So friends, that sound you just heard, it was the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating we have begun our descent to land the plane on this conversation, but we're not there yet. In fact, I would be remiss, Jenna, if I did not give you an opportunity at this moment to let people know how they can find out more about you and the work that you do. So what's a good place they can find you on the web?

Jenna Schutt:
Yes. I have a link that I believe you'll have in your show notes that is my free Joy Reflex training guide. I really designed that, and it's a totally free download and it's seven days of exactly what we've been talking about for the last hour is how to start retraining your brain. Now, this is for people who are of faith and people who have never stepped inside of a church again, never have, never will, that is not my heart, is to give it to people who need it. I hope that you'll find a faith community. I hope that you'll find faith friends. That has been such a big blessing and a big reason why I am where I am today, but I do want you to be able to have faith, peace, and joy. This free resource is great to just start if you have no idea where to start, you've listened and you said, "I want that, but I don't know how that is for you." And that's available, just a free download. And that connects you with me, and then we can stay connected.
And then I have my website, it's just my name, jennaschutt.com, and you can go on there and see pictures of me and my journey. You can read a little bit more about my journey and have some more free resources on there too. I would love for anybody to check that out. My heart is for people to leave with an empowerment that they can do this for themselves too.

Gary Schneeberger:
Warrick, as always, you as the founder, host, chief operating officer of Beyond the Crucible, the final question or questions are yours.

Warwick Fairfax:
Jenna, there may be somebody, and I know you deal a lot with women who have anxiety, and maybe there's a woman that's feeling like today is her worst day. It may be a health diagnosis, the loss of a loved one, maybe a life partner has walked out. I mean, there's all sorts of grief and anxiety that can befall people. What would a word of hope, because they might be feeling like, "How could this happen to me? I didn't deserve this diagnosis. I didn't deserve to be treated this way. This is so unfair"? What would a word of hope be for a person who today may feel like their worst day?

Jenna Schutt:
I would say I completely relate with you. I have had those same thoughts, and those do not mean... If you're a person of faith, that doesn't mean your faith is failing. It doesn't mean you're a failure. It just means you're human. And I would want to encourage you that you don't have to wait until you feel fearless or feel healed or feel completely certain of every single step you need to take to be able to move forward. You can ask yourself, "What is real right now?" Recognize that hard thing, and then you can take that hard thing and you can anchor yourself in what is true right now. What does the Lord say? What is the truth that you are living in right now? And then you can take the next faithful step, and you can let God meet you there.

Gary Schneeberger:
That puts our plane on the ground. But before you grab your peanut bags and head out, let me make sure you understand and know how to spell Jenna's name, because as a fellow German, I know how sometimes the names don't always get spelled right when we say them. It's Jenna, J-E-N-N-A, Schutt, S-C-H-U-T-T. Again, that's J-E-N-N-A-S-C-H-U-T-T.com.
Well, Warwick, we just finished a great conversation with our guest, Jenna Schutt, who has created this way to help people called the Joy Reflex. What stands out? I know there's a lot, so if you had to limit it to the top one, I'll give you two if you need them, what are the top things you want listeners and viewers to know about our conversation with Jenna?

Warwick Fairfax:
Jenna Schutt is a remarkable person. She's really learned so much through the crucible that she's been through. She grew up in Kansas and married a guy in Nebraska, she has two small sons, and life was going well. She was a nurse and dealing with cardiac patients. She spent her whole life caring for others. Just from the earliest age, I think she said she was like the eldest daughter and granddaughter of a pastor. She never found that as a burden because she rose to the occasion, would always care for others, never thinking about herself. That's who she was.
And so then she gets this diagnosis of this illness, this aggressive systemic mastocytosis, and it was a horrific experience. She had to go through stem cell treatment and chemo, and it was not easy. So she had to go from somebody that was caring for others to a point where she didn't know what the future held. Was she going to be able to see her boys grow up and get married? What was the future going to hold? And so her mind would naturally go down 100 different dark directions, and so she had to train her brain, really anchored by her faith, to think differently. What do I have to do today? If I have a meeting with the oncologist on Tuesday and it's now Thursday, there's nothing I can do between Thursday and Tuesday. I can't solve that problem.
Through prayer and scripture memory and just support of her husband and friends, she's trained her brain not to focus on that Tuesday appointment and, "What is it I need to do today? What's that one step I need to take? I know what I need to do for my health. Let's go to that oncologist on Tuesday, but what can I do today? Let me let that alone. If I start feeling anxious, pray about it, move my brain to think of other things." It's not easy, but she uses the analogy of exercise when you go to the gym. You don't go in there and try to lift that 100 pound weight first off. You work your way up. And so she has a whole system that works for her that helps train her brain to think differently, both mentally and spiritually.
So I think really the lesson for us, and if you're a person of faith, it's obviously pretty directly applicable. But even if you might have a different faith or faith isn't the most uppermost thing in your life, the question would be, what systems do you have in place so that you don't go down that dark road of 1,000 what ifs that may never happen, but that will just torture your soul? What's one positive step when you start thinking about the what if? "So look, I don't know what's going to happen on Tuesday with the oncologist, so let's not worry about that," easier said than done. But just training your brain to figure out, "Okay, what is it that I can do today? Maybe it's pick up my kids from school. Maybe it's get that project done at work. Maybe," if you're physically able, "just go to that nonprofit meeting and help out. Whatever it is, just what is it that I can do today that's positive? And let me not focus on the negative that I cannot control. One step at a time."
It sounds difficult and it's not easy, but it's like a lot of things in life. Whether it's eating well or going to the gym, what's one positive step? Maybe I'll slip. The other thing we talked about is having grace when you do slip. You'll have days which you maybe let your brain and mind and heart go down negative thoughts a bit too long, "Okay, yesterday I didn't do so well. Today's a new day. What will I do today that focus on things that are positive and not get consumed by things I can't control? And I'll have to wait till that meeting with the oncologist and go from there."
So really, it's a lot about retraining your brain, your heart, your spirit to not go down those dark roads and focus on the next step and really try to focus your brain on thinking about things that are more positive when you can have an impact each day.

Gary Schneeberger:
And that, folks, until the next time we're together, please remember we understand your crucible experiences are hard. We just talked about them for about an hour here, about Jenna's and about Warwick's, but we also know this, and Jenna and Warwick know this and they've talked about this, that your crucible experience do not define you. In fact, if you learn lessons from them, if you apply lessons from them, if you extract joy from them and purpose from them, they can lead you on a journey to the greatest destination you could ever want to go. And that destination is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.