October 7, 2025 • 8 mins
In this episode of Unwritten, host Trevor Barreca sits down with Jane Voelker to talk about a missionary leader's wild journey of healing that began when a priest she barely knew directly confronted her deepest insecurity.
Whether you're someone seeking stories of God's action in the world, or just curious about experiencing healing in the broken parts of your heart, this conversation will remind you that at the core of the gospel message is a God who steps in when we can’t fix ourselves and has the power to change areas where you feel completely stuck.
What You’ll Hear:
- Missionary and Regional Director Jane Voelker recounts her experience on a 5-day silent retreat where the priest repeatedly emphasized the need to know our weakest points because that is where God wants to meet us and where the enemy wants to attack.
- The surprising moment during confession when Jane, who thought her weakest point was keeping people at "an arms distance," was challenged by the priest (whom she had previously spoken to for only 5 minutes). The priest correctly identified her true deepest belief: "It's that you think you're unlovable", which led her to begin praying with that broken part of her heart.
- The unexpected way God broke in and healed Jane’s long-held fear of unlovableness, which did not require her to "try and fix" herself or "grasp for anything from God". Instead, the Holy Spirit healed her heart suddenly while she was brushing her teeth, affirming the truth that she is "lovable and I'm good and I am beautiful".
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome to Unwritten, a podcast dedicated to sharing stories of
the movement of the Holy Spirit in the world.
Today, I'm your host, Trevor Brekka, and on today's episode,
we're getting to hear from Jane Velker.
I want to invite you to subscribe to the show.
The Gospel of John's last verse tells us, but there are many
other things which Jesus did. Were every one of them to be
written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain
(00:26):
the books that would be written.We want to keep sharing these
unwritten stories of God's action in the world to redeem
His children, and your investment and sharing the show
helps. Thanks so much.
Have you ever had a friend that called you out?
My senior year of college there was a good friend of mine I
invited to play basketball with me and he brought some of his
buddies with him and at a certain point in the game he did
(00:46):
something that made me so mad and I lost my temper.
I was yelling at him and my other friend who is there as
well later that evening told me just how disappointing he wasn't
me and that it was honestly really embarrassing and not a
great witness of of Christ that I was giving.
And, and he pointed us out particularly because the first
friend that I mentioned was someone I was trying to share
(01:09):
the faith with and lead closer to God.
And my other friend, you know, called me out in a way that that
hurt but probably was the right thing to do.
No one likes to be called out, but we like it even less if it's
from someone we barely know. On today's episode, Jane is
confronted directly by a priest she's barely met and experiences
a wild journey of healing as a result.
(01:30):
Welcome to the show and listen in.
A couple years ago, I found myself giving a talk to about
400 girls, telling them why I wanted to tell them that the
shirt I was wearing was my favorite shirt in the whole
world. And here's the story that I told
them a few years before that I had been a missionary with focus
(01:50):
for a number of years and was doing a great job.
I loved the work. I had become a regional
director, so I was actually moreof a missionary to missionaries
at that point and in leadership and focus.
And yeah, really loving the lifethat I was living and thinking
things are going pretty well. And then I went on a silent
retreat. I'm a big fan of silent retreats
(02:10):
and was on this five day silent retreat where the priest who is
leading it, it was his first time ever leading 1.
He was giving us conferences each night and typically there's
a formula to the conferences andthe priests do the same thing at
each retreat. But he had no idea what he was
doing. So he was just talking about
kind of whatever he wanted to talk about.
And he kept saying in every talkthat we need to know where our
(02:34):
weakest point is. And there's three reasons we
need to know our weakest points.First, it's because it's exactly
where God wants to meet us. 2nd,it's because we're the enemy
wants to attack us. And 3rd, when we know our
weakest areas, then we can buildup our defenses against the
attacks of the enemy. So he kept talking about this.
(02:54):
We are up in the mountains in Colorado, and I didn't have
service there, but I would driveevery day into the Taco Bell
parking lot to call the priest who was a different priest who
was my spiritual director. So he wasn't in any of the
talks. He didn't hear at all what we
were talking about in the conferences from the priest.
And I was talking to my spiritual director about my
weakest point throughout the retreat.
(03:16):
And I said, Father, I think I finally figured it out.
It said, I want to keep people at an arms distance so that they
can't hurt me. And so the last day of the
retreat, I went to confession with the priest who had been
giving the conferences. It was a normal confession.
Yeah. And then at the end, I said,
and, Father, I also figured out my weakest point.
(03:37):
It's that I want to keep people at an arms distance so that they
can't hurt me. In this priest who I had talked
to for about 5 minutes of my life before this retreat started
and I had not talked to him again.
He had no idea what I was praying with for the previous
five days. He says that's not it.
And in my stubbornness and thinking I know everything
(03:58):
interior or exteriorly, I said well then I don't know what it
is. And I crossed my arms and leaned
back in my chair and decided I would wait him out and see what
he had to say since apparently he knew me better than I did.
After about 45 seconds of silence, he says, it's that you
think you're unlovable. And in that moment, I knew that
(04:20):
that was true. I couldn't have identified that
I had prayed with this for a fewdays.
I didn't think that I thought I was unlovable.
But when that priest told me that, something in me broke.
And I was like, yeah, I do thinkI'm unlovable.
And so my penance was to go intomy next hour of prayer and just
ask God to come be with me in this experience.
(04:42):
And that was the beginning of healing is I just said, God
come, come be with me. Come be with me in this feeling
of unlovableness. And God just sat there with me.
I thought, I thought for sure ifI invited God into that place in
my heart, he would be like you hypocrite.
You're a missionary and you're telling other people how great
they are. You believe that other people
(05:02):
are are true sons and daughters,but you think you're not worthy
of love. You think you, you think no one
can love you. Or I thought that God would be
like, OK, we have to fix this right away.
But he didn't do any of that in my prayer.
God just sat with me and this broken part of my heart and was
just with me for that whole hourof prayer.
(05:23):
And then I left the retreat. And what do you do when you find
out you're totally unlovable? You feel like you're totally
unlovable. I don't know.
I didn't know what to do. So I didn't really do anything
besides think about this and tryand figure out what to do to not
feel like I was unlovable. And then, yeah, so I would pray
about it sometimes. Sometimes I'd talk to spiritual,
(05:43):
a spiritual director or a good friend of what should I do with
this new information that I think I'm totally unlovable.
But nothing really happened. And then four or five months
later, I was leading a retreat and I was giving a talk on
healing. I became really convicted that
God wants to heal these parts ofour hearts that are broken.
He wants to be with us in them, and He wants us to know the
(06:04):
truth of who He says that we are.
And I became convicted of that through preparing for the talk
and just learning what the church and what the Saints say
about healing. So I was really excited about
the idea of healing. And we're at this little retreat
center in the middle of nowhere,West Virginia, which has become
one of my favorite places. I was wearing my favorite shirt
that I also wore that night. I gave that talk to all those
(06:26):
women. It's a really cute flower shirt.
And I was about to give this talk on healing.
We had just finished lunch. Something else you might want to
know about me, as I love to brush my teeth.
So I went to brush my teeth after lunch before I gave this
talk because I don't want to have bad breath while I gave a
talk. And so I'm brushing my teeth in
this little cabin in the middle of nowhere.
(06:47):
And halfway through brushing my teeth, I just catch, catch a
glimpse of myself in the mirror and I'm like caught off guard.
And I, I just think to myself, I'm so good and I'm so
beautiful. And after that I never doubted
it again. God just healed my heart.
In that moment the Holy Spirit broke in and healed this fear,
(07:08):
this unlovableness I had in my heart while I was brushing my
teeth. I didn't have to do anything.
I didn't have to try and fix myself.
I didn't have to try and grasp for anything from God.
He just came out of his love forme to tell me the truth that I'm
lovable, I am good, and I am beautiful.
And obviously after that, the shirt I was wearing became my
(07:30):
favorite shirt. And every time I wear it now, I
just think about how God has changed my life and the most
unexpected way at the most unexpected time.
And I'm always on the lookout for how the Holy Spirit wants to
break into my life. Thank you so much, Jane, for
sharing your story with us today.
And I love the part of it when you had to realize you didn't
know how to fix this problem. Like you couldn't just make
(07:51):
yourself, you know, change the way that you saw yourself.
But then God did it. I know, you know, we need to
act. We need to be disciplined.
We need to show resolve. I'm, I'm behind all those
things. It's important for us to take
action. I believe it.
But sometimes I think it's good to receive a reminder that at
the core of the gospel message is a God who steps in when we
can't fix ourselves. And he's continuing to do that
(08:13):
today. I'd invite you to take a moment
listening here today as this episode ends and ask God for His
grace to come into a part of your life with Him that you just
feel completely stuck in and believe that He has the power to
change that. Thanks so much and we hope to
see you next week.
Welcome to Unwritten, a podcast dedicated to sharing stories of
the movement of the Holy Spirit in the world.
Today, I'm your host, Trevor Brekka, and on today's episode,
we're getting to hear from Jane Velker.
I want to invite you to subscribe to the show.
The Gospel of John's last verse tells us, but there are many
other things which Jesus did. Were every one of them to be
written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain
(00:26):
the books that would be written.We want to keep sharing these
unwritten stories of God's action in the world to redeem
His children, and your investment and sharing the show
helps. Thanks so much.
Have you ever had a friend that called you out?
My senior year of college there was a good friend of mine I
invited to play basketball with me and he brought some of his
buddies with him and at a certain point in the game he did
(00:46):
something that made me so mad and I lost my temper.
I was yelling at him and my other friend who is there as
well later that evening told me just how disappointing he wasn't
me and that it was honestly really embarrassing and not a
great witness of of Christ that I was giving.
And, and he pointed us out particularly because the first
friend that I mentioned was someone I was trying to share
(01:09):
the faith with and lead closer to God.
And my other friend, you know, called me out in a way that that
hurt but probably was the right thing to do.
No one likes to be called out, but we like it even less if it's
from someone we barely know. On today's episode, Jane is
confronted directly by a priest she's barely met and experiences
a wild journey of healing as a result.
(01:30):
Welcome to the show and listen in.
A couple years ago, I found myself giving a talk to about
400 girls, telling them why I wanted to tell them that the
shirt I was wearing was my favorite shirt in the whole
world. And here's the story that I told
them a few years before that I had been a missionary with focus
(01:50):
for a number of years and was doing a great job.
I loved the work. I had become a regional
director, so I was actually moreof a missionary to missionaries
at that point and in leadership and focus.
And yeah, really loving the lifethat I was living and thinking
things are going pretty well. And then I went on a silent
retreat. I'm a big fan of silent retreats
(02:10):
and was on this five day silent retreat where the priest who is
leading it, it was his first time ever leading 1.
He was giving us conferences each night and typically there's
a formula to the conferences andthe priests do the same thing at
each retreat. But he had no idea what he was
doing. So he was just talking about
kind of whatever he wanted to talk about.
And he kept saying in every talkthat we need to know where our
(02:34):
weakest point is. And there's three reasons we
need to know our weakest points.First, it's because it's exactly
where God wants to meet us. 2nd,it's because we're the enemy
wants to attack us. And 3rd, when we know our
weakest areas, then we can buildup our defenses against the
attacks of the enemy. So he kept talking about this.
(02:54):
We are up in the mountains in Colorado, and I didn't have
service there, but I would driveevery day into the Taco Bell
parking lot to call the priest who was a different priest who
was my spiritual director. So he wasn't in any of the
talks. He didn't hear at all what we
were talking about in the conferences from the priest.
And I was talking to my spiritual director about my
weakest point throughout the retreat.
(03:16):
And I said, Father, I think I finally figured it out.
It said, I want to keep people at an arms distance so that they
can't hurt me. And so the last day of the
retreat, I went to confession with the priest who had been
giving the conferences. It was a normal confession.
Yeah. And then at the end, I said,
and, Father, I also figured out my weakest point.
(03:37):
It's that I want to keep people at an arms distance so that they
can't hurt me. In this priest who I had talked
to for about 5 minutes of my life before this retreat started
and I had not talked to him again.
He had no idea what I was praying with for the previous
five days. He says that's not it.
And in my stubbornness and thinking I know everything
(03:58):
interior or exteriorly, I said well then I don't know what it
is. And I crossed my arms and leaned
back in my chair and decided I would wait him out and see what
he had to say since apparently he knew me better than I did.
After about 45 seconds of silence, he says, it's that you
think you're unlovable. And in that moment, I knew that
(04:20):
that was true. I couldn't have identified that
I had prayed with this for a fewdays.
I didn't think that I thought I was unlovable.
But when that priest told me that, something in me broke.
And I was like, yeah, I do thinkI'm unlovable.
And so my penance was to go intomy next hour of prayer and just
ask God to come be with me in this experience.
(04:42):
And that was the beginning of healing is I just said, God
come, come be with me. Come be with me in this feeling
of unlovableness. And God just sat there with me.
I thought, I thought for sure ifI invited God into that place in
my heart, he would be like you hypocrite.
You're a missionary and you're telling other people how great
they are. You believe that other people
(05:02):
are are true sons and daughters,but you think you're not worthy
of love. You think you, you think no one
can love you. Or I thought that God would be
like, OK, we have to fix this right away.
But he didn't do any of that in my prayer.
God just sat with me and this broken part of my heart and was
just with me for that whole hourof prayer.
(05:23):
And then I left the retreat. And what do you do when you find
out you're totally unlovable? You feel like you're totally
unlovable. I don't know.
I didn't know what to do. So I didn't really do anything
besides think about this and tryand figure out what to do to not
feel like I was unlovable. And then, yeah, so I would pray
about it sometimes. Sometimes I'd talk to spiritual,
(05:43):
a spiritual director or a good friend of what should I do with
this new information that I think I'm totally unlovable.
But nothing really happened. And then four or five months
later, I was leading a retreat and I was giving a talk on
healing. I became really convicted that
God wants to heal these parts ofour hearts that are broken.
He wants to be with us in them, and He wants us to know the
(06:04):
truth of who He says that we are.
And I became convicted of that through preparing for the talk
and just learning what the church and what the Saints say
about healing. So I was really excited about
the idea of healing. And we're at this little retreat
center in the middle of nowhere,West Virginia, which has become
one of my favorite places. I was wearing my favorite shirt
that I also wore that night. I gave that talk to all those
(06:26):
women. It's a really cute flower shirt.
And I was about to give this talk on healing.
We had just finished lunch. Something else you might want to
know about me, as I love to brush my teeth.
So I went to brush my teeth after lunch before I gave this
talk because I don't want to have bad breath while I gave a
talk. And so I'm brushing my teeth in
this little cabin in the middle of nowhere.
(06:47):
And halfway through brushing my teeth, I just catch, catch a
glimpse of myself in the mirror and I'm like caught off guard.
And I, I just think to myself, I'm so good and I'm so
beautiful. And after that I never doubted
it again. God just healed my heart.
In that moment the Holy Spirit broke in and healed this fear,
(07:08):
this unlovableness I had in my heart while I was brushing my
teeth. I didn't have to do anything.
I didn't have to try and fix myself.
I didn't have to try and grasp for anything from God.
He just came out of his love forme to tell me the truth that I'm
lovable, I am good, and I am beautiful.
And obviously after that, the shirt I was wearing became my
(07:30):
favorite shirt. And every time I wear it now, I
just think about how God has changed my life and the most
unexpected way at the most unexpected time.
And I'm always on the lookout for how the Holy Spirit wants to
break into my life. Thank you so much, Jane, for
sharing your story with us today.
And I love the part of it when you had to realize you didn't
know how to fix this problem. Like you couldn't just make
(07:51):
yourself, you know, change the way that you saw yourself.
But then God did it. I know, you know, we need to
act. We need to be disciplined.
We need to show resolve. I'm, I'm behind all those
things. It's important for us to take
action. I believe it.
But sometimes I think it's good to receive a reminder that at
the core of the gospel message is a God who steps in when we
can't fix ourselves. And he's continuing to do that
(08:13):
today. I'd invite you to take a moment
listening here today as this episode ends and ask God for His
grace to come into a part of your life with Him that you just
feel completely stuck in and believe that He has the power to
change that. Thanks so much and we hope to
see you next week.
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