January 26, 2025 • 29 mins
In this episode of Bleeding Daylight, Lena Bjorna shares her remarkable journey from the Arctic Circle to Los Angeles, where she now leads a thriving evangelism ministry. After achieving significant success as an online marketing entrepreneur, Lena experienced a dramatic loss of both her business and marriage that led her to redirect her talents toward faith-based work. Her story demonstrates how God can use life's detours and difficulties to guide us toward our true calling.
The conversation takes an especially powerful turn as Lena shares the story of becoming a bonus mom to three sons, including Christopher, who has severe autism. Their family witnessed what they call the "chocolate milk miracle" during Christopher's recovery from a life-threatening swallowing disorder, culminating in a remarkable Easter Sunday healing. Through her ministry work at her local church's food bank, her Christian inspirational blog, and her outreach to maximum security prisons in Mexico, Lena's story illustrates how God can transform our greatest challenges into opportunities for meaningful impact.
WEBLINKS Lena Bjorna’s Website Lena on Facebook Lena on Instagram
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
I do hope you're able to share Bleeding Daylight with others who really need to hear it.
Please consider who might benefit from this episode as you listen.
(00:31):
There are dozens of other stories of lives transformed waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
Where do you turn when you've reached the peak of success in your chosen field and it's suddenly torn away from you?
Could it be that an abundant life can spring up out of life's difficulties?
(00:51):
Today's guest has a remarkable story of transformation.
Joining me today is Lena Bjorna, a Norwegian born speaker and ministry leader whose path has taken some fascinating turns.
After achieving remarkable success as an online marketing entrepreneur, Lena felt called to redirect her talents towards faith-based work.
(01:21):
Now living in the Los Angeles area, she leads a thriving evangelism ministry that's helped triple her church's Spanish-speaking congregation, runs a Christian inspirational blog, and travels to maximum security prisons in Mexico to share her message.
Beyond her ministry work, Lena's personal journey as a bonus mom to three sons has deeply informed her perspective on faith, resilience, and God's perfect timing.
(01:47):
Lena, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much, Rodney.
I am so honored to be here with you.
I've been looking forward to speaking with you, so thank you for that wonderful introduction.
It sounds like your life has been filled with detours, but you've learned to see detours as opportunities.
What brought that shift for you?
(02:07):
Wow, which one of the shifts?
There's been a lot of shifts.
Oh my goodness.
I was actually born in a city above the Arctic Circle in the north of Norway called Tromsø, land of the northern light and the midnight sun.
But I always had this adventurous spirit.
I always wanted to get out, see the world, explore the world, and always felt like my hometown was too small for me.
(02:31):
So I think that's part of what's caused these shifts, if you will, in my life.
It's just this adventurous spirit that I've had even since I was a little girl.
Growing up in Norway, I traveled to California to become an actress.
After that, I got into entrepreneurship and building a business.
Today, I lead a ministry, speak and teach, and I'm a bonus mom, three boys.
(02:53):
So there's been quite a few shifts in my life, and it's just been interesting to see.
You think you're going in a certain direction, and then God shows you, oh, not so fast, okay?
I got something else for you.
Think it's a detour.
You get there, and you're like, wow, it's actually taught me the lesson I was supposed to learn at this point in my life, and it actually turns out to be a very valuable detour.
I know that there was a major shift in how you viewed faith back in the mid-90s when you were in college.
(03:18):
Can you tell me about that change of the way that you thought about relationship with God?
Yes.
Growing up in Norway, I always thought that I was a Christian.
Christianity is the main faith in Norway, at least it was back when I was growing up in the 80s, 1980s.
If you weren't a Buddhist or a Muslim, then you were a Christian.
(03:38):
You were a nominal Christian.
If you went to church once in a while and you believed in God, yeah, then you were a Christian.
I would occasionally go to church.
I had the head knowledge.
I believed in God, but my faith was very shallow.
It was like a real faith where you walk with God and you seek His will for your life and you trust in Him.
(03:59):
Bottom line is, I wasn't living in obedience.
The year after I moved to California in 1996, I came to faith in God, real, true, deep faith in God for the first time in my life.
So that was like a big shift in my life when that happened.
Even back then as a brand new believer, I developed a passion for evangelism, telling others about the Lord, sharing my faith, and that is something that's followed me through my entire Christian life now for, well, we're coming up on 30 years next summer.
(04:34):
That is something that stuck with me, is that passion to see other people saved.
Lately, I'm very blessed to be the director of evangelism at my local church here in Los Angeles, where I then get to teach and train as part of this leadership role.
I have a team of volunteers that I bring with me out on Saturday morning to strike up conversations with people that come to the church, to our food bank.
(05:03):
They line up on the sidewalk outside the church, anywhere from 250 to 350 families every single Saturday morning.
My team and I go and strike up conversations with these people that are waiting in line.
Some of them stand in line for hours.
They stand there and wait for the food bank to open.
So they have all the time in the world, and they can't get away from us.
(05:25):
They can't go anywhere because they have to keep their spot in the line.
So it's actually perfect.
All jokes aside, it's just been an amazing experience.
It's been two years since my evangelism ministry, the ministry that I lead, teamed up with the church's food bank, which has actually been around for, I think, two decades now.
For the past two years, we've seen, wow, just the fruit that God's brought about.
(05:49):
We just try to love on people.
We tell them about God.
We invite them to church, give out Bibles, listen to people's stories.
We want them to feel like they're seen and heard.
So many people that come out there are in very difficult situations, standing in line for hours to get food items, and we just try to show them God's love, be the hands and feet of Jesus.
(06:11):
That has just turned out to be so, so powerful, that combination of providing for their physical needs and then addressing their spiritual needs as well.
And the church is really growing as a result.
I love that idea of evangelism, because sometimes people get the idea that evangelism is just sharing a list of beliefs, and yet you've mentioned that you strike up a conversation.
(06:36):
You mentioned that you want them to be seen and heard.
You mentioned that you want to hear their story.
How important is it, if we are sharing our faith, that we actually spend time listening?
That is incredibly important.
When you show people that you are willing to listen and that you truly care, you are not there just to preach a message.
(06:57):
They may or may not feel it's relevant to their lives.
You show that you actually are there to care for them and address their specific needs, and that you are willing to listen to their story, provide a shoulder to cry on.
When you do that and you make people feel like they matter, their guard goes down and they open up.
(07:19):
They understand that you want them well.
You truly care about them, and when you leave them with that feeling, they're willing to listen.
They're willing to listen.
When it's your turn to talk, yeah, they're open.
It's like you build that rapport when you show that you care, when you listen.
That has, I really think, been the key to success with this program.
(07:41):
I call it the Love Your Neighbor Program or Love Your Neighbor Agenda, because we refer to these people as our neighbors.
They come from all over our neighborhood and many surrounding cities.
This was actually my pastor's idea to start ministering to these people in line at the food bank.
When he brought up the idea, it just made perfect sense, because what is it that Jesus tells us to do?
(08:04):
He tells us to love our neighbor, and we refer to these people as our neighbors.
That just happened to be what the church has always called these people from the neighborhood that come out for the food items.
So I thought, wow, it just makes so much sense.
So here we are, loving our neighbors.
I think so much of the success that we've had with this ministry and this program and the growth that we've seen in the church as a result, it just all has to do with showing God's love.
(08:33):
That's what it's all about, demonstrating God's love to people who are sometimes desperately in need for God's love.
They're basically right there at the doorstep of the church, so they really just need to take one more step and they're inside, right?
That's what we tell them.
Say, hey, tomorrow, come back, take one more step and you're inside.
(08:53):
You can join us for church.
People have been doing that.
Some people, it takes a little longer.
They don't come necessarily the next day.
It might take weeks.
It may take months.
I know that one of the changes that happened in your life was following a very successful time in the online marketing world, and then that seemed to collapse.
I guess at that time you're thinking, God, what are you doing?
(09:15):
And yet, as you mentioned, he had a plan for you.
Tell me about the change in that plan.
Oh, wow.
It was really an amazing season in my life to be able to run an online business.
This was after I gave up acting.
Having always been an entrepreneur at heart, I thought, you know what?
Let me see if I can try to build an online business.
(09:38):
Once I learned to market and built a business, I became very successful.
I actually became the top female producer with the direct sales company that I represented.
I had opportunities to travel and speak to large audiences.
I remember thinking to myself, wow, I finally found the success I always wanted all my life.
(10:00):
I felt like, wow, I finally made it.
I was married at the time and we had the beautiful home with the granite countertops in the kitchen, the sun-filled rooms.
It was just my dream home.
We were traveling the world, going to exotic destinations, vacationing in overwater bungalows and rubbing shoulders with rich people.
(10:22):
It was just surreal.
Life was sweet.
During this season of my life, God was really speaking to my heart.
He was speaking to my heart about having all my priorities upside down.
I'd become very lukewarm in my relationship with the Lord because my life at the time was just all about success and recognition and making money and production and getting better and getting ahead.
(10:52):
That's what every day revolved around.
God spoke to me about that, just like He did when I was pursuing an acting career a few years earlier.
He spoke to me about how acting had become an obsession.
My priorities were in the wrong place.
I didn't see it at the time.
I see it now, looking back, that what happened when I became very successful as a marketer was the same thing that happened when I was pursuing an acting career.
(11:18):
My focus was in the wrong place.
God spoke to me about that.
I didn't really listen.
It's like, no, God's talking to me about this.
I need to spend more time with the Lord.
I need to be more consistent about going to church and reading my Bible.
Everything was just about marketing and success and training people and traveling and speaking.
(11:38):
Then what happened?
The business, the company that I represented, collapsed very quickly.
Very quickly, I lost everything that I had worked so hard for.
I lost almost all my clients and customers.
With that, I lost practically all my income sources.
(12:02):
While I was trying to recover from the shock of losing everything and trying to figure out what to do next, I became convinced, based on what I felt that God had been speaking to me about, that God didn't want me to try to pick up the pieces and try to build a new online marketing business.
Now, that would have been a natural thing to do since I had the experience and the skill set.
(12:26):
But I felt that God was really calling me to leave the secular marketing industry and instead start using my gifts and passions and experiences for the kingdom, for kingdom work.
I felt like He was saying to me, Hey, will you stop getting sidetracked all the time?
(12:50):
Will you just try to focus on what really matters in life?
What God was saying to me as a follower of Jesus, I knew that He had something that was much more eternity focused, something that wasn't just going to go up in smoke.
I knew that He had a greater purpose, a higher purpose.
Maybe it sounds simple.
(13:11):
Okay, God called me to do something different, give that up, start a new chapter of your life.
But I can tell you that that was a very, very difficult season in my life.
It was a very dark season in my life.
My husband and I, we had quickly gotten so far behind on our bills that we actually ended up having to sell our car to pay the bill collectors that were calling every day.
(13:33):
We had hit bottom so fast, so fast, because we had not been wise with our money.
Instead of investing our money, we had been living it up.
We just didn't think it was going to end.
We thought, well, we're so successful now.
We thought that we had all the time in the world to make investments later on.
(13:55):
We never expected the money to just suddenly dry up.
In the midst of losing our business, my husband and I also sadly ended up getting a divorce.
As the business and my marriage crumbled, I went into a very deep depression.
This was also a time when I experienced a lot of spiritual attacks.
(14:15):
I really felt the enemy's presence in my life like I think I have probably never ever felt before or since.
It was a dark time.
For one, the enemy was sowing a lot of fear in my heart about many different things and making me feel like I was a failure, that I was unloved, that I was unworthy.
(14:36):
But deep inside, it was as if I knew in my heart that this was just the enemy trying to hinder me from fulfilling God's purposes for me.
I knew that God had a purpose for me and that it was a passing season.
It was a dark season, but I knew that with God's help, I would persist, I would get through it, and He would take me to the next thing.
(14:59):
The next chapter of my life was to start a ministry, speak and train and teach.
It took some patience.
It took hard work.
There's been plenty of obstacles, but I am very happy to say that I believe that today I am living my true purpose and focusing on the things that I think God wants me to focus on.
(15:21):
It's a big turnaround, and I know that another big change in your life happened in the middle of COVID.
Tell me about the way that God changed your life during that COVID period.
I wonder if maybe you're referring to the fact that I got married in the midst of the COVID pandemic.
Indeed.
Maybe.
I don't know.
(15:41):
Don and I started dating in 2019.
What a year to start dating, right?
We had planned a wedding for May of 2020.
We had everything planned and perfectly lined up with the venue and the vendors and the music.
I had ordered a beautiful wedding gown from overseas, and everything was just perfectly lined up for our incredible wedding that we were going to have in May of 2020.
(16:12):
And then in March of 2020, something happened, something we all remember as the COVID pandemic suddenly struck.
So here we are like, oh no, what about our wedding?
What is going on?
All the vendors shutting their doors, the world going into lockdown.
(16:35):
We didn't know what to do.
Now we had to scrap all our original wedding plans and try to see if maybe we could find another way to get married.
That venue that we had booked closed down, the vendors closed down.
(16:55):
My wedding gown also never arrived from overseas because all the shipments were stopped.
You could not receive anything from any other country or any other place.
We decided we wanted to get married anyway, because there was a lot of talk back and forth between Don and I.
What do we do?
Do we just postpone it until the world is back to normal?
(17:15):
But how do we know when the world is going to return to normal?
Maybe it will take years.
Maybe it will never happen.
And we felt so strongly that we wanted to be together and we wanted to do it the right way and do it God's way and get married.
After a lot of prayer and brainstorming, we were actually able to find another venue, a second venue.
This was a cliffside by the Pacific Ocean.
(17:38):
And on the news, we hear about more and more and more places getting shut down, more and more and more restrictions.
And sure enough, we drive out to the cliffside and now this place has been shut down as well.
So there goes plan B.
Where can we get married?
We actually ended up getting married at a local park.
We got married in April as opposed to May because we thought we better try to pull this off before anything else happens.
(18:05):
So we got married a little bit sooner.
Our wedding was nothing like we had planned.
It was an outdoor wedding with 10 people only, including us and my husband's three sons and the pastor, 10 people, because that was the maximum guests that you could have.
We had to social distance and all of that.
The wedding gown never came.
(18:26):
So I ended up, get this, buying a summer dress from Target.
Target and Walmart were the only two stores that were open where you could purchase clothes, jewelry, anything like that.
So I got a very pretty summer dress from Target that functioned as my wedding dress.
We didn't have wedding rings.
We bought them at Walmart.
(18:48):
So everything was kind of improvised, take what you can, do what you can, just try to pull it off.
And we did.
We had no banquet hall where we could have a reception.
That was part of our original plan, but that plan had to get scrapped, obviously.
No banquet hall.
So we ended up getting pizza from a pizza place around the corner and everybody sat on the grass in the park and had pizza.
(19:12):
That was our reception.
We were supposed to go to Thailand for our honeymoon.
Couldn't travel to Thailand, so we ended up going up to Santa Barbara.
It was actually a very nice little honeymoon, but very different from what we had planned.
God gave us a way.
He provided a way.
You have mentioned the three boys, and so suddenly you're a mom to three boys.
(19:35):
Of course, that's always going to bring its challenges, and there were a few challenges along the way, weren't there?
Yes.
I have never had children of my own.
So to become not just a new wife, but to become a mom to three boys, it's definitely been a growing experience.
It's been, I think, one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.
And I get emotional even just talking about it now and thinking about it.
(19:59):
God has really showed up for our family.
My three stepsons are David, who's now 26, Christopher, who is 23, and Michael, who just turned 16.
I would never have thought that I would sit here and tell you that I believe that being a stepmom is one of my callings.
I never had this desire to be a mom.
(20:22):
But it's been a huge blessing and a wonderful learning experience.
It's taught me to be more selfless, for one, and patient.
One of the boys actually has a pretty severe disability.
Christopher, he has severe autism.
He narrowly survived a debilitating swallowing disorder back in the summer of 2021.
(20:49):
I'll tell you a little bit about what is so remarkable about Christopher, why I have to tell you he's one of the most amazing human beings that I have ever met.
When my husband and I rushed Christopher to the ER for the third time in the summer of 2021, he had lost 80 pounds in six months because of this swallowing disorder.
(21:12):
And he was severely malnourished, dehydrated.
He had developed a UTI while he was in his mother's care.
And the doctor said that a sepsis infection could easily have attacked his body and killed him.
In a matter of days, or even in a matter of hours.
After his life was saved at the ER, the doctors sent Christopher home with my husband and me.
(21:35):
And at home, we continued the rehabilitation of Christopher.
We didn't know if he was ever going to get completely well.
He was incredibly weak.
And like I said, he'd lost so much weight.
My husband and I, we both stopped working so that we could take care of Christopher around the clock.
Three times a week, we had a nurse that would come to our house to give Christopher IV fluid treatments.
(21:58):
All day, every day, our lives revolved around trying to get Christopher to gain some of the weight back that he had lost.
And he was so weak, he didn't even have the strength to chew.
So the diet that we had to give him, it consisted exclusively of minced or pureed foods.
(22:19):
Each bite of nutrition packed food took Christopher about 30 minutes to swallow.
30 minutes to swallow a small bite of pureed foods.
So for the next nine months, my husband and I, we took turns and we spent about 10 to 12 hours a day hand feeding Christopher.
(22:43):
And the goal was to try to train him, to help him train his throat to start working normally again, and eventually hopefully be able to eat solid foods again.
We counted bites, and we counted ounces, and we counted calories, and we logged and measured and kept track of every bit of progress and regression.
(23:07):
And there were many setbacks.
What made it especially heartbreaking, I think, for us, the rest of the family, was that Christopher loves food.
That is one of his greatest joys in life, is to eat.
He loves burgers, and pizza, and ice cream, and all those unhealthy things that he's not supposed to eat.
(23:29):
He loves those types of foods, and he couldn't eat any of it.
And it was nothing we wanted more than for him to be able to eat some junk food even.
But no, he could not.
It was heartbreaking to witness.
And to witness him every day fight for his health, even though we work with him, and we spoon-fed him, and try to encourage him and push him every hour, every day.
(23:53):
His intake of foods and fluids were not sufficient to gain weight or even to maintain it.
But we had a lot of people praying, our whole church, our friends, our families, everybody was praying for Christopher that God would heal his throat, and that he would eventually be able to eat and drink normally again.
(24:14):
And then, Rodney, then finally it happened.
Specifically, there were two big answers to prayers.
The first one, I call it the chocolate milk miracle.
We would place a cooler next to Christopher's bed at night.
Anytime that he would drink during the day, it would take him about 20 to 30 minutes to just force down just a few ounces of liquid.
(24:40):
And he had to drink, obviously, to keep from getting dehydrated again, right?
So it was a daily battle to keep him hydrated.
It was critical that anytime he felt like drinking, that he had a beverage within reach.
This was about five months into his rehabilitation at home.
When we checked the cooler in the morning, we noticed that some of the bottles were almost empty.
(25:04):
Most notably, the bottles that contained Christopher's favorite drink, chocolate milk.
And this happened several days in a row.
Knowing how long it would take Christopher to drink, because we saw him drink during the day, right?
And how long it would take.
We were really worried that maybe he stayed up the whole night to drink.
(25:24):
And that would mean that he didn't get enough sleep.
And that, again, could be a huge roadblock to his recovery.
We set up a hidden camera in Christopher's room.
And what we saw when we watched the recording, Rodney, I mean, our jaws dropped.
And then we started weeping for joy.
Because the film, it showed Christopher waking up at the crack of dawn, grabbing a bottle of chocolate milk from the cooler.
(25:52):
And then with all the effort that he could muster in about four minutes, he chugged down 16 ounces of chocolate milk.
So this is what had been going on.
What he couldn't get himself to do during the daytime when we were watching, he was, for some mysterious reason, able to do while he was in bed at night when he was supposed to be sleeping.
(26:17):
After the chocolate milk miracle, we knew that something incredible was happening with Christopher's throat and that things were moving in the right direction.
And after four more months, and this was on Resurrection Sunday of all days in 2022, God gave us our second miracle.
That day, Christopher took his first bite of solid food in over a year.
(26:44):
A burger, an In-N-Out burger, his favorite burger.
He chewed it, he swallowed it, he savored it, he smiled the entire time.
And of course, we filmed it.
That was an Easter miracle on Easter Sunday.
(27:05):
And from that point on, Christopher transitioned gradually to eating normal foods again.
And today we consider his throat to be completely healed.
It's so good to hear the change that God has brought about.
Obviously, the hard work that you and Dom put in, but on top of that, just continuing to pray, having people pray for something that wasn't expected to turn around and yet with God's power, everything is possible.
(27:36):
And I'm reminded that in everything that seems to have happened through your life, there have been changes brought about that you weren't expecting, that you wouldn't have welcomed, and yet God has used them for his glory.
And I know that now you're encouraging others.
You're especially encouraging women.
How do you do that online?
(27:56):
What are the things that people can engage online that are going to be an encouragement to them?
Yeah, so on my blog and on my website, I have some resources for anybody who would like to know how to better live the abundant Christian life that Jesus has called them to live.
SheLivesAbundantly.com, that is my website.
(28:17):
And from there, you can head on over to my blog to find a link to the blog a little bit further down on the site.
Also, I have some downloadable resources.
One is on how to find your God-given calling.
It's a brainstorming log.
I have some other resources on how to better share your faith.
A third resource on how to adapt a more biblical mindset.
(28:40):
You've mentioned the website, and I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find that easily.
But Lena, I just want to thank you for spending some time with us today, for sharing some of your story and some of the things that God has you doing.
It's been a great conversation.
So thank you for being on Bleeding Daylight.
Yes, absolutely.
(29:00):
Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
I do hope you're able to share Bleeding Daylight with others who really need to hear it.
Please consider who might benefit from this episode as you listen.
(00:31):
There are dozens of other stories of lives transformed waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
Where do you turn when you've reached the peak of success in your chosen field and it's suddenly torn away from you?
Could it be that an abundant life can spring up out of life's difficulties?
(00:51):
Today's guest has a remarkable story of transformation.
Joining me today is Lena Bjorna, a Norwegian born speaker and ministry leader whose path has taken some fascinating turns.
After achieving remarkable success as an online marketing entrepreneur, Lena felt called to redirect her talents towards faith-based work.
(01:21):
Now living in the Los Angeles area, she leads a thriving evangelism ministry that's helped triple her church's Spanish-speaking congregation, runs a Christian inspirational blog, and travels to maximum security prisons in Mexico to share her message.
Beyond her ministry work, Lena's personal journey as a bonus mom to three sons has deeply informed her perspective on faith, resilience, and God's perfect timing.
(01:47):
Lena, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you so much, Rodney.
I am so honored to be here with you.
I've been looking forward to speaking with you, so thank you for that wonderful introduction.
It sounds like your life has been filled with detours, but you've learned to see detours as opportunities.
What brought that shift for you?
(02:07):
Wow, which one of the shifts?
There's been a lot of shifts.
Oh my goodness.
I was actually born in a city above the Arctic Circle in the north of Norway called Tromsø, land of the northern light and the midnight sun.
But I always had this adventurous spirit.
I always wanted to get out, see the world, explore the world, and always felt like my hometown was too small for me.
(02:31):
So I think that's part of what's caused these shifts, if you will, in my life.
It's just this adventurous spirit that I've had even since I was a little girl.
Growing up in Norway, I traveled to California to become an actress.
After that, I got into entrepreneurship and building a business.
Today, I lead a ministry, speak and teach, and I'm a bonus mom, three boys.
(02:53):
So there's been quite a few shifts in my life, and it's just been interesting to see.
You think you're going in a certain direction, and then God shows you, oh, not so fast, okay?
I got something else for you.
Think it's a detour.
You get there, and you're like, wow, it's actually taught me the lesson I was supposed to learn at this point in my life, and it actually turns out to be a very valuable detour.
I know that there was a major shift in how you viewed faith back in the mid-90s when you were in college.
(03:18):
Can you tell me about that change of the way that you thought about relationship with God?
Yes.
Growing up in Norway, I always thought that I was a Christian.
Christianity is the main faith in Norway, at least it was back when I was growing up in the 80s, 1980s.
If you weren't a Buddhist or a Muslim, then you were a Christian.
(03:38):
You were a nominal Christian.
If you went to church once in a while and you believed in God, yeah, then you were a Christian.
I would occasionally go to church.
I had the head knowledge.
I believed in God, but my faith was very shallow.
It was like a real faith where you walk with God and you seek His will for your life and you trust in Him.
(03:59):
Bottom line is, I wasn't living in obedience.
The year after I moved to California in 1996, I came to faith in God, real, true, deep faith in God for the first time in my life.
So that was like a big shift in my life when that happened.
Even back then as a brand new believer, I developed a passion for evangelism, telling others about the Lord, sharing my faith, and that is something that's followed me through my entire Christian life now for, well, we're coming up on 30 years next summer.
(04:34):
That is something that stuck with me, is that passion to see other people saved.
Lately, I'm very blessed to be the director of evangelism at my local church here in Los Angeles, where I then get to teach and train as part of this leadership role.
I have a team of volunteers that I bring with me out on Saturday morning to strike up conversations with people that come to the church, to our food bank.
(05:03):
They line up on the sidewalk outside the church, anywhere from 250 to 350 families every single Saturday morning.
My team and I go and strike up conversations with these people that are waiting in line.
Some of them stand in line for hours.
They stand there and wait for the food bank to open.
So they have all the time in the world, and they can't get away from us.
(05:25):
They can't go anywhere because they have to keep their spot in the line.
So it's actually perfect.
All jokes aside, it's just been an amazing experience.
It's been two years since my evangelism ministry, the ministry that I lead, teamed up with the church's food bank, which has actually been around for, I think, two decades now.
For the past two years, we've seen, wow, just the fruit that God's brought about.
(05:49):
We just try to love on people.
We tell them about God.
We invite them to church, give out Bibles, listen to people's stories.
We want them to feel like they're seen and heard.
So many people that come out there are in very difficult situations, standing in line for hours to get food items, and we just try to show them God's love, be the hands and feet of Jesus.
(06:11):
That has just turned out to be so, so powerful, that combination of providing for their physical needs and then addressing their spiritual needs as well.
And the church is really growing as a result.
I love that idea of evangelism, because sometimes people get the idea that evangelism is just sharing a list of beliefs, and yet you've mentioned that you strike up a conversation.
(06:36):
You mentioned that you want them to be seen and heard.
You mentioned that you want to hear their story.
How important is it, if we are sharing our faith, that we actually spend time listening?
That is incredibly important.
When you show people that you are willing to listen and that you truly care, you are not there just to preach a message.
(06:57):
They may or may not feel it's relevant to their lives.
You show that you actually are there to care for them and address their specific needs, and that you are willing to listen to their story, provide a shoulder to cry on.
When you do that and you make people feel like they matter, their guard goes down and they open up.
(07:19):
They understand that you want them well.
You truly care about them, and when you leave them with that feeling, they're willing to listen.
They're willing to listen.
When it's your turn to talk, yeah, they're open.
It's like you build that rapport when you show that you care, when you listen.
That has, I really think, been the key to success with this program.
(07:41):
I call it the Love Your Neighbor Program or Love Your Neighbor Agenda, because we refer to these people as our neighbors.
They come from all over our neighborhood and many surrounding cities.
This was actually my pastor's idea to start ministering to these people in line at the food bank.
When he brought up the idea, it just made perfect sense, because what is it that Jesus tells us to do?
(08:04):
He tells us to love our neighbor, and we refer to these people as our neighbors.
That just happened to be what the church has always called these people from the neighborhood that come out for the food items.
So I thought, wow, it just makes so much sense.
So here we are, loving our neighbors.
I think so much of the success that we've had with this ministry and this program and the growth that we've seen in the church as a result, it just all has to do with showing God's love.
(08:33):
That's what it's all about, demonstrating God's love to people who are sometimes desperately in need for God's love.
They're basically right there at the doorstep of the church, so they really just need to take one more step and they're inside, right?
That's what we tell them.
Say, hey, tomorrow, come back, take one more step and you're inside.
(08:53):
You can join us for church.
People have been doing that.
Some people, it takes a little longer.
They don't come necessarily the next day.
It might take weeks.
It may take months.
I know that one of the changes that happened in your life was following a very successful time in the online marketing world, and then that seemed to collapse.
I guess at that time you're thinking, God, what are you doing?
(09:15):
And yet, as you mentioned, he had a plan for you.
Tell me about the change in that plan.
Oh, wow.
It was really an amazing season in my life to be able to run an online business.
This was after I gave up acting.
Having always been an entrepreneur at heart, I thought, you know what?
Let me see if I can try to build an online business.
(09:38):
Once I learned to market and built a business, I became very successful.
I actually became the top female producer with the direct sales company that I represented.
I had opportunities to travel and speak to large audiences.
I remember thinking to myself, wow, I finally found the success I always wanted all my life.
(10:00):
I felt like, wow, I finally made it.
I was married at the time and we had the beautiful home with the granite countertops in the kitchen, the sun-filled rooms.
It was just my dream home.
We were traveling the world, going to exotic destinations, vacationing in overwater bungalows and rubbing shoulders with rich people.
(10:22):
It was just surreal.
Life was sweet.
During this season of my life, God was really speaking to my heart.
He was speaking to my heart about having all my priorities upside down.
I'd become very lukewarm in my relationship with the Lord because my life at the time was just all about success and recognition and making money and production and getting better and getting ahead.
(10:52):
That's what every day revolved around.
God spoke to me about that, just like He did when I was pursuing an acting career a few years earlier.
He spoke to me about how acting had become an obsession.
My priorities were in the wrong place.
I didn't see it at the time.
I see it now, looking back, that what happened when I became very successful as a marketer was the same thing that happened when I was pursuing an acting career.
(11:18):
My focus was in the wrong place.
God spoke to me about that.
I didn't really listen.
It's like, no, God's talking to me about this.
I need to spend more time with the Lord.
I need to be more consistent about going to church and reading my Bible.
Everything was just about marketing and success and training people and traveling and speaking.
(11:38):
Then what happened?
The business, the company that I represented, collapsed very quickly.
Very quickly, I lost everything that I had worked so hard for.
I lost almost all my clients and customers.
With that, I lost practically all my income sources.
(12:02):
While I was trying to recover from the shock of losing everything and trying to figure out what to do next, I became convinced, based on what I felt that God had been speaking to me about, that God didn't want me to try to pick up the pieces and try to build a new online marketing business.
Now, that would have been a natural thing to do since I had the experience and the skill set.
(12:26):
But I felt that God was really calling me to leave the secular marketing industry and instead start using my gifts and passions and experiences for the kingdom, for kingdom work.
I felt like He was saying to me, Hey, will you stop getting sidetracked all the time?
(12:50):
Will you just try to focus on what really matters in life?
What God was saying to me as a follower of Jesus, I knew that He had something that was much more eternity focused, something that wasn't just going to go up in smoke.
I knew that He had a greater purpose, a higher purpose.
Maybe it sounds simple.
(13:11):
Okay, God called me to do something different, give that up, start a new chapter of your life.
But I can tell you that that was a very, very difficult season in my life.
It was a very dark season in my life.
My husband and I, we had quickly gotten so far behind on our bills that we actually ended up having to sell our car to pay the bill collectors that were calling every day.
(13:33):
We had hit bottom so fast, so fast, because we had not been wise with our money.
Instead of investing our money, we had been living it up.
We just didn't think it was going to end.
We thought, well, we're so successful now.
We thought that we had all the time in the world to make investments later on.
(13:55):
We never expected the money to just suddenly dry up.
In the midst of losing our business, my husband and I also sadly ended up getting a divorce.
As the business and my marriage crumbled, I went into a very deep depression.
This was also a time when I experienced a lot of spiritual attacks.
(14:15):
I really felt the enemy's presence in my life like I think I have probably never ever felt before or since.
It was a dark time.
For one, the enemy was sowing a lot of fear in my heart about many different things and making me feel like I was a failure, that I was unloved, that I was unworthy.
(14:36):
But deep inside, it was as if I knew in my heart that this was just the enemy trying to hinder me from fulfilling God's purposes for me.
I knew that God had a purpose for me and that it was a passing season.
It was a dark season, but I knew that with God's help, I would persist, I would get through it, and He would take me to the next thing.
(14:59):
The next chapter of my life was to start a ministry, speak and train and teach.
It took some patience.
It took hard work.
There's been plenty of obstacles, but I am very happy to say that I believe that today I am living my true purpose and focusing on the things that I think God wants me to focus on.
(15:21):
It's a big turnaround, and I know that another big change in your life happened in the middle of COVID.
Tell me about the way that God changed your life during that COVID period.
I wonder if maybe you're referring to the fact that I got married in the midst of the COVID pandemic.
Indeed.
Maybe.
I don't know.
(15:41):
Don and I started dating in 2019.
What a year to start dating, right?
We had planned a wedding for May of 2020.
We had everything planned and perfectly lined up with the venue and the vendors and the music.
I had ordered a beautiful wedding gown from overseas, and everything was just perfectly lined up for our incredible wedding that we were going to have in May of 2020.
(16:12):
And then in March of 2020, something happened, something we all remember as the COVID pandemic suddenly struck.
So here we are like, oh no, what about our wedding?
What is going on?
All the vendors shutting their doors, the world going into lockdown.
(16:35):
We didn't know what to do.
Now we had to scrap all our original wedding plans and try to see if maybe we could find another way to get married.
That venue that we had booked closed down, the vendors closed down.
(16:55):
My wedding gown also never arrived from overseas because all the shipments were stopped.
You could not receive anything from any other country or any other place.
We decided we wanted to get married anyway, because there was a lot of talk back and forth between Don and I.
What do we do?
Do we just postpone it until the world is back to normal?
(17:15):
But how do we know when the world is going to return to normal?
Maybe it will take years.
Maybe it will never happen.
And we felt so strongly that we wanted to be together and we wanted to do it the right way and do it God's way and get married.
After a lot of prayer and brainstorming, we were actually able to find another venue, a second venue.
This was a cliffside by the Pacific Ocean.
(17:38):
And on the news, we hear about more and more and more places getting shut down, more and more and more restrictions.
And sure enough, we drive out to the cliffside and now this place has been shut down as well.
So there goes plan B.
Where can we get married?
We actually ended up getting married at a local park.
We got married in April as opposed to May because we thought we better try to pull this off before anything else happens.
(18:05):
So we got married a little bit sooner.
Our wedding was nothing like we had planned.
It was an outdoor wedding with 10 people only, including us and my husband's three sons and the pastor, 10 people, because that was the maximum guests that you could have.
We had to social distance and all of that.
The wedding gown never came.
(18:26):
So I ended up, get this, buying a summer dress from Target.
Target and Walmart were the only two stores that were open where you could purchase clothes, jewelry, anything like that.
So I got a very pretty summer dress from Target that functioned as my wedding dress.
We didn't have wedding rings.
We bought them at Walmart.
(18:48):
So everything was kind of improvised, take what you can, do what you can, just try to pull it off.
And we did.
We had no banquet hall where we could have a reception.
That was part of our original plan, but that plan had to get scrapped, obviously.
No banquet hall.
So we ended up getting pizza from a pizza place around the corner and everybody sat on the grass in the park and had pizza.
(19:12):
That was our reception.
We were supposed to go to Thailand for our honeymoon.
Couldn't travel to Thailand, so we ended up going up to Santa Barbara.
It was actually a very nice little honeymoon, but very different from what we had planned.
God gave us a way.
He provided a way.
You have mentioned the three boys, and so suddenly you're a mom to three boys.
(19:35):
Of course, that's always going to bring its challenges, and there were a few challenges along the way, weren't there?
Yes.
I have never had children of my own.
So to become not just a new wife, but to become a mom to three boys, it's definitely been a growing experience.
It's been, I think, one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.
And I get emotional even just talking about it now and thinking about it.
(19:59):
God has really showed up for our family.
My three stepsons are David, who's now 26, Christopher, who is 23, and Michael, who just turned 16.
I would never have thought that I would sit here and tell you that I believe that being a stepmom is one of my callings.
I never had this desire to be a mom.
(20:22):
But it's been a huge blessing and a wonderful learning experience.
It's taught me to be more selfless, for one, and patient.
One of the boys actually has a pretty severe disability.
Christopher, he has severe autism.
He narrowly survived a debilitating swallowing disorder back in the summer of 2021.
(20:49):
I'll tell you a little bit about what is so remarkable about Christopher, why I have to tell you he's one of the most amazing human beings that I have ever met.
When my husband and I rushed Christopher to the ER for the third time in the summer of 2021, he had lost 80 pounds in six months because of this swallowing disorder.
(21:12):
And he was severely malnourished, dehydrated.
He had developed a UTI while he was in his mother's care.
And the doctor said that a sepsis infection could easily have attacked his body and killed him.
In a matter of days, or even in a matter of hours.
After his life was saved at the ER, the doctors sent Christopher home with my husband and me.
(21:35):
And at home, we continued the rehabilitation of Christopher.
We didn't know if he was ever going to get completely well.
He was incredibly weak.
And like I said, he'd lost so much weight.
My husband and I, we both stopped working so that we could take care of Christopher around the clock.
Three times a week, we had a nurse that would come to our house to give Christopher IV fluid treatments.
(21:58):
All day, every day, our lives revolved around trying to get Christopher to gain some of the weight back that he had lost.
And he was so weak, he didn't even have the strength to chew.
So the diet that we had to give him, it consisted exclusively of minced or pureed foods.
(22:19):
Each bite of nutrition packed food took Christopher about 30 minutes to swallow.
30 minutes to swallow a small bite of pureed foods.
So for the next nine months, my husband and I, we took turns and we spent about 10 to 12 hours a day hand feeding Christopher.
(22:43):
And the goal was to try to train him, to help him train his throat to start working normally again, and eventually hopefully be able to eat solid foods again.
We counted bites, and we counted ounces, and we counted calories, and we logged and measured and kept track of every bit of progress and regression.
(23:07):
And there were many setbacks.
What made it especially heartbreaking, I think, for us, the rest of the family, was that Christopher loves food.
That is one of his greatest joys in life, is to eat.
He loves burgers, and pizza, and ice cream, and all those unhealthy things that he's not supposed to eat.
(23:29):
He loves those types of foods, and he couldn't eat any of it.
And it was nothing we wanted more than for him to be able to eat some junk food even.
But no, he could not.
It was heartbreaking to witness.
And to witness him every day fight for his health, even though we work with him, and we spoon-fed him, and try to encourage him and push him every hour, every day.
(23:53):
His intake of foods and fluids were not sufficient to gain weight or even to maintain it.
But we had a lot of people praying, our whole church, our friends, our families, everybody was praying for Christopher that God would heal his throat, and that he would eventually be able to eat and drink normally again.
(24:14):
And then, Rodney, then finally it happened.
Specifically, there were two big answers to prayers.
The first one, I call it the chocolate milk miracle.
We would place a cooler next to Christopher's bed at night.
Anytime that he would drink during the day, it would take him about 20 to 30 minutes to just force down just a few ounces of liquid.
(24:40):
And he had to drink, obviously, to keep from getting dehydrated again, right?
So it was a daily battle to keep him hydrated.
It was critical that anytime he felt like drinking, that he had a beverage within reach.
This was about five months into his rehabilitation at home.
When we checked the cooler in the morning, we noticed that some of the bottles were almost empty.
(25:04):
Most notably, the bottles that contained Christopher's favorite drink, chocolate milk.
And this happened several days in a row.
Knowing how long it would take Christopher to drink, because we saw him drink during the day, right?
And how long it would take.
We were really worried that maybe he stayed up the whole night to drink.
(25:24):
And that would mean that he didn't get enough sleep.
And that, again, could be a huge roadblock to his recovery.
We set up a hidden camera in Christopher's room.
And what we saw when we watched the recording, Rodney, I mean, our jaws dropped.
And then we started weeping for joy.
Because the film, it showed Christopher waking up at the crack of dawn, grabbing a bottle of chocolate milk from the cooler.
(25:52):
And then with all the effort that he could muster in about four minutes, he chugged down 16 ounces of chocolate milk.
So this is what had been going on.
What he couldn't get himself to do during the daytime when we were watching, he was, for some mysterious reason, able to do while he was in bed at night when he was supposed to be sleeping.
(26:17):
After the chocolate milk miracle, we knew that something incredible was happening with Christopher's throat and that things were moving in the right direction.
And after four more months, and this was on Resurrection Sunday of all days in 2022, God gave us our second miracle.
That day, Christopher took his first bite of solid food in over a year.
(26:44):
A burger, an In-N-Out burger, his favorite burger.
He chewed it, he swallowed it, he savored it, he smiled the entire time.
And of course, we filmed it.
That was an Easter miracle on Easter Sunday.
(27:05):
And from that point on, Christopher transitioned gradually to eating normal foods again.
And today we consider his throat to be completely healed.
It's so good to hear the change that God has brought about.
Obviously, the hard work that you and Dom put in, but on top of that, just continuing to pray, having people pray for something that wasn't expected to turn around and yet with God's power, everything is possible.
(27:36):
And I'm reminded that in everything that seems to have happened through your life, there have been changes brought about that you weren't expecting, that you wouldn't have welcomed, and yet God has used them for his glory.
And I know that now you're encouraging others.
You're especially encouraging women.
How do you do that online?
(27:56):
What are the things that people can engage online that are going to be an encouragement to them?
Yeah, so on my blog and on my website, I have some resources for anybody who would like to know how to better live the abundant Christian life that Jesus has called them to live.
SheLivesAbundantly.com, that is my website.
(28:17):
And from there, you can head on over to my blog to find a link to the blog a little bit further down on the site.
Also, I have some downloadable resources.
One is on how to find your God-given calling.
It's a brainstorming log.
I have some other resources on how to better share your faith.
A third resource on how to adapt a more biblical mindset.
(28:40):
You've mentioned the website, and I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find that easily.
But Lena, I just want to thank you for spending some time with us today, for sharing some of your story and some of the things that God has you doing.
It's been a great conversation.
So thank you for being on Bleeding Daylight.
Yes, absolutely.
(29:00):
Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.